The Eternity Cure (17 page)

“You don’t give me much credit, do you?” Jackal replied, shaking his head. “I ruled an entire raider city before you two ever came along. I know how to deal with large groups of killers. So don’t worry, I won’t threaten the bloodthirsty cannibals.” He smirked. “But if you think we’re going to get out of here without some kind of bloodshed, you’re more naive than I thought.”

I didn’t answer, because we had crossed the rubble pile that led up to the crumbling wall and entered the lair of the mole men.

Chapter 9

We caught their attention immediately. As soon as we ducked through the entrance and stepped into the room, three mole men glanced up from one of the fire pits. For a second, they stared at us, blinking in shock. Jackal grinned back at them and nodded.

“Evening,” he said cordially, and the mole men leaped upright with shrieks and hisses of outrage, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Weapons flashed, and howls rose into the air, as the entire sea of mole men surged toward us with murderous intent.

“Now, now!” Jackal bellowed, his clear, confident voice ringing through the chamber. “Let’s not be hasty! We’re not here for a massacre! And you people don’t want a fight with us, trust me!”

Whether it was the certainty in his voice, or the sudden flash of fangs, the entire group of mole men skidded to a halt a few yards away, glaring at us with wide, hate-filled eyes. I shot an amazed glance at my blood brother, who faced the hostile mob with a smile on his face, completely in his element.

“That’s better,” Jackal said, still with that easy grin. “Let’s all calm down a little. You know what we are, and we’d rather not have to paint the walls in blood to get what we want. We can all be civilized here, right?”

Whispers were beginning to spread through the mob, growing louder and more restless. I tensed again, but suddenly the crowd parted and an old woman with stringy white hair stepped forward. Most of her teeth had rotted out of her skull, and her eyes were filmy blue, but she curled her lips back and pointed with a bony claw. Not at me or Jackal, but at Zeke.

“You!” she hissed as Zeke blinked at her. “Topsider! I know you! You’re the outsider that brought the rest of them down here, filling our tunnels with light, attracting what doesn’t belong. You are the cause of this. You scare the rats away with your endless noise, and now, you bring
them
down from the streets, just as we feared! Curse you!” She spat at Zeke. “Curse you, and your whole thieving race! You’re like the plague, crowding places you don’t belong, bringing death with you! The Undercity will never be safe now!”

“It isn’t safe up top, either,” Zeke answered in a steady voice. “We couldn’t stay aboveground, not with the sickness spreading so fast. I’m sorry we invaded your territory, but it was the only place we could go.” She spat at him again, unappeased, and he raised his hands. “We’ll be out of here as soon as we can, I promise.”

“Which brings us to our next order of business,” Jackal broke in, sounding slightly annoyed that the attention had shifted away from him. He took a step forward, and the woman flinched back, making him smile. “We have to get into the Inner City. And since all the gates up top are sealed off, the only way through is to go beneath. That’s where you come in.”

The old woman glared at Jackal fearfully. “Vampire, you want us to show you the tunnels to the Inner City so you can return and tell your people of the humans living right below their feet?” She shook her withered head. “Never! Kill me if you want to, we would all rather die than bring the monsters down here.”

“We aren’t going to tell anyone about you,” I said, before Jackal could say something like,
That can be arranged
. “We’re not from the Inner City—we’re not even from New Covington.”
Well, Allie the Vampire can’t call the city home, anyway
. “The vampires up top aren’t our friends. Why do you think we’re down here with a human?” I didn’t look at Zeke when I said this, but I felt his eyes on me. “I know you have no reason to trust us, but we have to get to the Inner City, and we’re not leaving the tunnels until we do.”

More muttering and whispers. I could sense that a few of the mole men were considering our words, though most of them still looked terrified. This was their worst nightmare, vampires making their way below ground, into their territory. Fear of the monsters had driven them underground in the first place, and now we had invaded their safe haven. I could suddenly understand their reluctance.

“Your words mean nothing to us, vampire,” the old woman said at last. “We have only the promise of your silence, and that is not enough. We cannot take the chance that you will stay topside. If more monsters follow you into the tunnels, we have nothing with which to defend ourselves.”

“Then let me offer something.” Zeke stepped forward and all eyes snapped to him. He faced them calmly, hands at his sides, raising his voice to speak to them all. “Do you know the easiest way to kill a vampire?” he asked the crowd.

The mole men shuffled and hissed, muttering among themselves. They were reluctant to speak, but at the same time, they were intrigued. Killing vampires appealed to them, it seemed. Finally, a voice in the crowd spoke up, and more followed.

“Burn it.”

“Cut off its head.”

“Drive a wooden spike through its heart.”

I shifted uncomfortably.
No need to sound so eager.
Zeke nodded. “But you’d have to get awfully close to do that, wouldn’t you?” he asked in that same cool voice. “And no one wants to be that close to a vampire and risk having it see you, right? Better to take it out from a distance.”

“What is your point, topsider?” the old woman hissed.

Zeke narrowed his eyes. In one smooth motion, he swung the crossbow from his shoulders, drew back the string, and fired a dart at the far wall. The spike hit a rusty steel drum with a ringing clang, embedded halfway through the metal, and the mole men gasped then burst into a storm of muttering.

“I’ll give this to anyone who can guide us through the tunnels to the Inner City,” Zeke said when the noise died down. When I glanced at him in surprise, he shrugged. “I can’t take it with me, anyway,” he whispered. “Not up there. The vamps would take one look at this and freak out.”

“Kid’s got a point,” Jackal said begrudgingly. “You go waving something like that around the Inner City, you’ll get your head torn off before you know what’s happening. Still, I’m not too keen on a bunch of vampire-hating cannibals having it, either.”

One human edged forward, eyeing us warily. Like the others, he was frightfully thin, his hands and face spotted with open sores, but he seemed even more wasted than the rest. One side of his face was nothing but a furrow of scars, part of his lip had been torn off, and his eye was a milky-white orb, unseeing and useless.

“I’ll take you,” he rasped, his fevered gaze on Zeke’s crossbow. “For that weapon, I’ll take you there.”

“Amos,” the old woman hissed, turning her filmy gaze on him. “Don’t be a fool. They’re vampires. They’ll kill you and leave your body for the rats.”

The mole man shrugged his bony shoulders and stepped forward, away from the crowd. “Why should I care about that?” he asked in a dull, flat voice. “I have nothing left. And I’m tired of living in fear.” He stepped up to Zeke, bringing his scarred face very close to the other human. Zeke stood his ground. “Give me that weapon,” the mole man said, “and you have a deal. I’ll take you to the Inner City right now.”

Zeke nodded. “All right,” he said, swinging the crossbow to his back again. “But you get us there, first. I’ll give you the weapon once we’re past the walls, not before.”

The mole man bared rotten teeth in a grim smile. “Follow me.”

We left the lair of the mole men through a tunnel on the far wall, feeling the cold, suspicious, angry glares of the mob on either side of us. I could smell their fear, see the tension lining their wasted bodies, the tight grip on their weapons, and hoped we could get out of there before things exploded into violence. They didn’t move, however, just watched us as we trailed our guide through the chamber, into the tunnel, and melted into the darkness.

The mole man, Amos, moved quickly through the passages, never looking back, never checking to see if we were still there. He carried no light and maneuvered the pitch blackness and shadow with no trouble at all, sliding into tunnels and crawling through pipes as easily as walking. This was his world, this maze of concrete and rust and mold and damp, like the streets and broken buildings up top had been mine. I had the strange realization that the mole men and Unregistereds were very similar. Despite their aversion to light and their disturbing tendency to eat human flesh, they were just scavengers, fighting for food, avoiding the vampires, struggling to survive.

We walked for a few hours, following our silent guide through endless tunnels and dark passageways. Rats fled from us, and once a huge snake slithered into the water out of sight, but we met no one else as we ventured farther into the belly of the city.

Dawn was less than an hour away, and I was beginning to get a little nervous, when Amos finally stopped. A rusty ladder led up to a dark hole in the ceiling, covered by a metal grate. Weeds, grass and bramble smothered the top and poked in through the spaces, dripping water on our heads.

“The Inner City is through here,” Amos rasped, peering at the exit with a half fearful, half disgusted look on his face. “The grate is loose, but no one has used it for years, and the vampires don’t know about it. We don’t go topside, especially not up there. Now…” He turned on Zeke, his eyes narrowed hungrily. “You promised me that weapon if I led you to the Inner City. Hand it over, and let me go.”

Zeke immediately swung the crossbow off his back. “Thank you,” he told the mole man, holding it out. “Tell your people we won’t let the vampires know that you’re down here.”

Amos snatched the weapon from his hands and backed away, glaring at us. “It’s a little late now, topsider,” he growled, looking at me and Jackal. “The vampires already know.”

Before we could reply, he turned and fled into the tunnels clutching his prize, and the darkness swallowed him instantly.

Jackal made a face at the retreating mole man then glanced thoughtfully up at the grate. “Well,” he mused, squinting through the metal slats as if he could see the city through the weeds and vegetation, “here we are. I don’t think we’ll be knocking on the Prince’s door tonight, though.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. Dawn was close. It would be risky and dangerous to continue through unknown territory with the light threatening the horizon. “The sun’s almost up. Looks like we’re sleeping down here one more day.” I gazed down the tunnel Amos had vanished into and frowned. “And there’s a mole man running around with a crossbow now. Let’s hope nothing comes creeping back while we’re all asleep.”

Jackal’s voice was a soft growl. “It’s not the mole men I’m worried about.”

I blinked at him, confused for a moment. Until Zeke did something I’d never seen him do before.

He smiled. A cold, dangerous smile, his eyes glittering with dark promise. It sent a chill through me as I realized I
didn’t
know him anymore. Before, I would’ve trusted Zeke with my life, and had, on more than one occasion, slept through the day with him nearby, guarding me. I’d been wary, especially at first, but I’d come to realize that Zeke wasn’t the type to stab someone in cold blood, even if it was a vampire.

Now, I wasn’t sure. This vengeful, hard-eyed Zeke worried me; I didn’t know if he still considered me a friend, or if I was just another vampire who had turned on him. I was even less sure about Jackal.

“Does it worry you?” Zeke’s voice was soft, menacing. “That the human you’ve been pushing all night will be guarding your dead body while the sun’s up? Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you started talking about my father.”

Jackal stared at Zeke, appraising. Zeke put a hand on one of his stakes and stared back. I tensed, ready to jump in if either of them went for the other.

After a moment, Jackal bared his fangs in a savage grin. “Well, color me shocked—the human actually has a pair. He might survive the Inner City, after all.” Stepping back, he nodded at me. “Getting a little crowded in here for my taste. You two have fun, I’ll be back when the sun goes down. Oh, and human…” His amber gaze flicked to Zeke. “Contrary to what you might think, I actually
can
wake up in the middle of the day. So if you have the notion to track me down and take my head for a trophy, I suggest you be ready for the fight of your life, because I won’t hold back until one of us is smeared over the walls. Just a friendly warning.”

He gave a too-bright smile that was anything but friendly, turned and sauntered off. His tall, lean form melted into the darkness of a nearby tunnel, and he was gone.

Silence fell, stretched awkwardly between me and Zeke, who watched me under the faint light coming through the metal grate. We were finally alone, and dawn was close but not imminent. I could finally ask him all the questions burning inside my head, but I found that I didn’t know where to start. He wasn’t the same person as before.