Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) (37 page)

There, she knew it. Zephanie gave him a withering look. “Please tell me you’re not the one feeding your mum all that rubbish. You know how she gets.”

“It isn’t me, I swear,” he replied, hand to heart. “She likes to talk with the old tunnel tramps. They're the ones spreading the stories.”

“Shock and horror. What better source of information than drunks and addicts? I can see why she’s so worried.”

Matt began placing the completed martinis on a tray, as cautiously and precisely as his next words. “Some of those people go back years, Zeph. Sure they're nutters, but my mum can tell truth from gin goblins. I'm not saying there're monsters, but something's up. Be right back.” He took up the tray and headed over to a nearby table where a pair of sleazy heroin dealers were busy socializing with their big-knockered money launderer.

The world assumed that criminals were all about guns and bloodshed, but their business dealings were typically no different than the legitimate kind. Terms were negotiated, agreements reached, and nine out of ten times nothing went wrong. When they did, the Tyburn market served as neutral ground where settlements could be made, Zephanie’s family acting as impartial arbiters when required.

The arrangement kept violence between the factions to a minimum, and since war was expensive, the various bosses were willing to pay toshers like her handsomely for the service. The ethics of her family might be warped, but their methods worked.

She was lifting her drink to her lips when the lights spasmed and went black. A faint stannic smell wisped around her.

Angry protests rang out, then she heard Matt’s voice calling for calm. “Our apologies, gentlemen. Generator must have quit. We’ll have it back in a minute.”

Several people flicked on lighters and smart phones, creating little pools of brightness in the chamber, and Zephanie rounded the bar to fetch the heavy lights stored there. Her keen vision had adjusted to the gloom, and as the odd metallic scent sharpened, she saw something from the corner of her eye.

She turned, squinting, sure that it must be just some trick of shadows, but then she saw them. Dozens of them. Inhuman things that crawled from the darkness like panthers creeping up on a kill.

Crying out a warning, she snatched up a light, igniting its powerful beam just as the screams began, the monsters leaping and slashing and biting, swarming over the shocked outlaws.

“Matt!” she screamed as she saw her cousin bowled over by the panicked men he’d just served, then something heavy landed square on her back, slamming her to the stone floor as a barrage of bullets erupted, their roar and echoes deafening her even as the wind was squeezed from her lungs.

Something pulled away her light and smashed it against the floor, still pinning her down as flashes of gunfire pulsed. But loud as they were, the shots couldn’t drown out the horrific cries of panic, nor the wet crunch of what sounded like a thousand hungry jaws.

Desperately Zephanie tried to wiggle free, but whatever was sitting on her placed its claws on the back of her head, gently but firmly pressing her chin to the floor as the chaos unfolded. She couldn’t breathe with it on her, and she grasped uselessly at the ancient stone floor as spots clustered before her eyes.

This couldn’t be happening. And yet it was.

The Rat Queen had returned.

* * *

Coyle kept his breathing steady as he ran the athletic track at Ladywell arena, pounding through the drizzle that dimmed the sky. Nine laps down, one more to go, and his four kilometre morning run would be complete. Then home to begin his weight routine.

By any standards he was in incredible shape. Every ounce of fat stripped from his once tubby body, his formerly weak muscles now hard and fluid, his heart and lungs like machines from ten years of relentless running. But neither health nor vanity fuelled his efforts. Everything he did, from his 5 a.m. workouts to his strict diet and endless martial arts classes, were due to only one thing.

Pain.

His pale green eyes narrowed as he came around the far bend in the track, a woman having materialized from the gray film of rain. She was all in black from her hoodie down to her jeans, even her wellies, which was a bit overmuch given it was barely raining. He didn’t slow as he approached, intending to pass her, but then she stepped onto the track.

“Thomas Coyle.”

He halted. Only two kinds of people would bother him at dawn—the police who wanted him as a vigilante, and the criminals he'd hurt to get the information he needed. The woman didn’t have the look of either.

“Who are you?” He walked towards her, stopping an arm’s length away. If she was about to try anything he wanted her close.

She tugged back her hood to reveal a pale face, pretty if unadorned, framed in shoulder length hair as black as everything else about her. It was her eyes that gave him pause. The right was a shocking electric blue, the left as gray as the sky above them. “My name’s Zephanie Sweetly. I’m supposing you know my family?”

Indeed he did, and Coyle didn’t bother to hide his distaste. “Pack of lawless guttersnipes. What do you want?”

Her eyes narrowed, but aside from that, her expression remained impassive. “People say you're the top private detective in London. Used to work for the Missing Persons Bureau. Heard you find people for the right price.”

“Your facts are straight,” he replied, “but I don't work for your sort.”

She kept her poker-face. “There’s plenty of people I could go to if it was something routine. Picked you for a reason.”

He rested his hands on his hips. “Which is?”

“I think I know who kidnapped your son.”

A chill rippled through Coyle, as cold as the rain trickling down his face. In all likelihood this was bullshit. A trick of some kind. Still. Ten years later, the possibility of knowing gripped his heart, pumped it harder.

He leaned in close, his jaw clenched. “Fair warning, Miss Sweetly. You’d best be careful what you say from this point on. I took what happened to my boy very, very personally.”

Her mismatched gaze met his. “I swear to God, Mr. Coyle, I wouldn’t lie about something like that. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been for you.”

There was compassion in her voice, and, more importantly, the only thing he cared for anymore, the truth. “So why now?” he growled. “You been too busy sewer hunting the past decade to let anybody know?”

“Because until a couple of days ago, I thought it was impossible,” she answered.

The woman spoke in riddles. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s someone I thought was just a legend. Turns out she’s not. She's abducted some clients of ours, and I need to find them. Or at least know if they're alive or dead."

“And what does any of that have to do with my son?”

“I think I’d best show you,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any other way you’d believe me. It's just too fucked up for words.”

“Found where?”

She looked meaningfully at the ground, then back up at him. “Where do you think?”

“And how do I know this isn’t a trap, what with the kind of scum you deal with?"

She stood her ground. “Mr. Coyle, you might not care for the class of people we toshers work with, but I'm sure you know we keep as neutral as Switzerland. This is about business. Nothing more.”

Business for her, but from the aching in his heart, much more for him. "Fine then. When?"

She pulled her hood back over her head, shadowing her strange eyes. "As soon as you're ready. I don't know how much time we've got, but I'm guessing it's not much."

* * *

Zephanie’s light exposed the scene of carnage at the Tyburn market for Coyle’s inspection. She struggled not to gag. Toppled tables and chairs, dozens of spent bullet casings, spatters of blood staining the floor. And hundreds upon hundreds of rats.

“What happened here?” he asked, making his way over to the largest pile of bodies at the centre of the chamber, kicking aside the vermin that had been feasting on the corpses. They snarled at him but scattered, preferring to move on rather than fight over the dead.

“Rawheads,” she replied, straining to keep her voice level. Even through her gas mask, she could catch the reek of spoiled blood. One of the times when having a superior olfactory sense was a nuisance. She righted a chair and sat down before she went arse over elbow. It took a lot to turn the stomach of a tosher, yet Coyle seemed completely detached from the slaughter around them.

He knelt beside one of the bodies, a representative of the Russian mafia, and eased away the silver plated pistol still clutched in the corpse’s hand. “They some kind of gang?”

“No. I don’t know what they are.” It was true she didn’t know for certain.

Coyle turned, his spectral green eyes visible through the mask’s lenses, then looked back to the weapon. He slid out the clip, then tossed it aside. “Well, somebody killed these wankers. Where were you when it happened?”

“Right here.”

“Then who were they?” he asked, the gas mask rasping his voice.

“I told you I don’t know. But they sure as hell weren’t human. No bloody way.”

Coyle eased the Russian over onto his back, inspecting the wounds. Clearly something big had hooked onto the dead man’s shoulders, slicing them open even as its jaws had clamped down on the back of his neck.

In her mind, Zephanie could still hear the crunch of vertebrae snapping. She swallowed, then swallowed again. At her feet, there was a sound like the cracking of knuckles. It was a rat working on a human foot. She waggled her fingers in its direction, and with a unctuous squeak it skittered away.

Coyle followed the rat with his light, and paused before asking, “So what are you saying? They were vampires or something?”

Zephanie slumped in her chair. He thought she was crazy, and why wouldn’t he? But facts were facts. She swept her arm in an arc. “How many people do you see dead here?”

He stood, surveying the chamber. “About two dozen, give or take.”

“And how many were armed?”

“Virtually all, judging from the weapons laying about.”

“And how many died of gunshots?”

“None that I can see, though it’s hard to be sure given your little friends.” He moved his beam of light to the walls, examining the fresh holes in the ancient murals. “By the looks of it they gathered in the center of the room. All of them firing outwards. Last ones died back to back. Guns empty. Maybe a hundred rounds in all.”

“So what would you say killed them?” she asked.

He returned his light over the deceased. “Again, hard to tell. Looks like they were savaged by some kind of animals. Large dogs, perhaps. Very large.”

“Only that’s impossible, right?” she replied. “I’d be happy to think I was just hysterical at the time. My mind playing tricks on me. But how could any animal kill so many armed men? Not even a tiger could have done this. Not even a bloody bear.”

Her voice was rising, she realized, and she shut her mouth, forcing her panic back down. The man didn’t seem fazed. People had a lot of bad things to say about Thomas Coyle—mercenary, psychopath, hypocrite—but nobody had ever accused him of being a coward.

Though maybe his indifference came from already having been through the worst thing a man could experience. After that, any other horror would seem mundane.

“Aside from you, were there any survivors?” he asked.

Zephanie nodded. “My aunt. My cousin. A couple of others of our family.”

“Whatever killed your customers left you toshers alone?”

She chose to ignore the implied accusation. “Not exactly. When we went through the bodies we discovered that a bunch of them had been taken.”

“Correction. All were either killed or kidnapped. Except for your family.”

There was only so much one could ignore. “Yes, exactly. And there might be a reason for that, which I’ll be getting to. Believe it or not, I went after them.”

Coyle levelled his light on her midriff, shining it over her body. “You don’t look particularly dangerous. Any reason you were so brave?”

She waved her light over the bodies, the strobe effect making the dead seem animated. “These men were part of London’s criminal elite. We were paid to keep them safe while they discussed their business. How am I supposed to explain to their bosses what happened to them? Nobody’s ever going to believe the truth.”

"Might help if you returned their bodies," he countered. "Or at least didn't leave them for the rats. Not sure I'd appreciate that if I was the one dealing with you. Seems disrespectful, even by their degenerate standards."

Zephanie sighed. "As soon as the attack was over, my people made for the surface. Nobody's been willing to come back here yet." And she didn’t think anyone would. Men and money. No use throwing more at a lost cause.

"Except for you," he said pointedly. “And what was your motivation? Duty, or just trying to save your own rear end by collecting some evidence?”

It rankled that he thought her a cold-hearted bitch. Probably because he saw her for what she was. Never mind, he was down here and interested because she gave her answers straight and quick. Just like her, truth was often a bitch. “Both. And it’s more than my rear we’re talking about. Best ways, my family loses our business. Worst ways, we suffer a vendetta by every crime syndicate in London. If I had a witness, that would at least be something, but this...”

Coyle kept his light on her as she trailed off. “How noble. What did you find when you followed?”

Gesturing, Zephanie led him to the rear of the chamber, away from the feasting vermin. “Back here’s a way down to some old mine shaft, part of it collapsed and flooded. Probably a good thousand years old. The supports have all rotted away, so a cave-in seemed likely if we disturbed it, and the air quality is pretty dodgy, too. We always considered it too dangerous to explore and left it be."

"But that's where they came from, was it?" he asked.

“I only went down as I was chasing after them. Figured the tunnel could stand me sneaking through it, seeing as it just took their numbers. You game to have a look?”

He turned his masked head to the shadowy hole in the floor, and nodded.