all about us.”
“Would you two kindly shut up?” said Ethan. “Unless you want them to un-forget about us. We’re too close for comfort right now as it is.”
We shut up.
The next morning, well before dawn, we got up and readied our weapons. The boy and his mother watched with wide eyes as we did our work, neither of them offering a word.
As the sun started to rise, Ethan sat down next to the two of them. They looked scared, and I could hardly blame them; he was an intimidating guy at the best of times, and these were hardly that. Ethan looked back and forth between them and settled his gaze on the mother, who looked a little more together than she had before. “We’re going to need you to show us the way to your stronghold,” he said.
She shook her head. The boy just stared, half-hiding behind her. Ethan said, “My team and I are here to stop what’s going on in the middle of town, around the Needle. We’re going to need your help to do that.”
“They… they won’t let us back in,” said the woman, her eyes starting to go glassy again.
He shook his head and put his hand to her jaw, bringing her back around to focus on him. “We’ll make sure that you get inside. Both of you. We need you for a guide, ma’am. We’ll feed you and protect you along the way.”
“You’ll help us find a home?” she said. The boy seemed less hopeful than she did and I didn’t blame him. It was hard to get excited about a place you’d never seen and was full of people who hated you.
“That’s the plan, yeah,” said Ethan. His tone said that it wasn’t the entire plan, and Birgitte’s eye roll at his words seemed to confirm that, but it was enough that the woman reached out and took his hand. “Thank you,” she whispered, the hope rising in her eyes again.
Ethan gave her a surprisingly charming smile. “Thank us by getting us to your stronghold. We’ll keep you safe.”
Her name was Lynette. The boy was Virgil. She and the boy were right: most of the supernatural creatures that were really dangerous avoided the sunshine. According to Erasmus, an old Vodoun priest I knew, it had something to do with the sun being an agent of cleansing. “At least that’s what I think when it comes to vampires,” he’d continued, giving me a shrug. Whatever the reason, the sun seemed to act like a heavy-duty laser on a lot of the undead. It repelled a lot of other creatures, too, so I was fine with walking around in the light as long as I had my sunglasses available.
No, I’m not a vampire-kin or anything like that. Dwarves are a subterranean bunch. Strong light just hurts my eyes, that’s all.
In spite of the urge that had led the two of them to hole up for shelter next to a Hag’s lair, Lynette knew her stuff when it came to avoiding danger in Seattle. She led us through a tortured maze of alleys and caves, each block taking five times as long to travel as they would have normally. Ethan was content to go along with it, apparently fine with the slow pace as long as we didn’t run into anything else. The greenish spot on my hand made me tend to agree with him.
It was noon when we finally stopped in the remains of a bus shelter. The bus itself was actually wrapped around the small building, providing enough concealment that we felt safe in stopping for some dried lunch. Fuck travel rations; I had lived on enough hard bread and cheese to last me the rest of my life. We went with jerky and trail mix, crunching our way through a couple handfuls each. Lynette and Virgil did the same, Virgil’s eyes widening when he came to a piece of chocolate in the trail mix. He took it out of his mouth and showed it to me.
“What is this?” he said.
“Chocolate. Wizards make it.” It was true as far as I knew.
He stared at it for a few more seconds before putting it back in his mouth, reverently licking his dirty fingers to get every last smidge. I grinned. It was hard not to enjoy his simple delight in something I was so used to. He gave me a shy smile in return.
“So’re we gonna make it to the stronghold today?” said Baran. He stared at the two of them, his cold eyes reflecting nothing remotely Human.
Lynette shrank beneath his gaze. “N…not today.Tomorrow noon.”
Baran swore in some language I hadn’t heard before. He turned to Ethan and said, “Let’s just ditch ‘em and push through.”
Ethan’s look shut Baran up. “That’s something I’d expect the newbie to say,” said Ethan. I decided not to protest. “She’s been alive here a lot longer than we have. We follow her lead.” He didn’t look at Lynette, either before or after his speech, but I saw her spine straighten a bit. Birgitte rolled her eyes again but said nothing.
Two hours later, we stopped in front of a billboard that had three Goblins nailed to it in a floral pattern. Two of them were dead. The other one just looked at us, his ribcage moving weakly and his tongue hanging out. He wasn’t even strong enough to summon a cry of alarm. Above them, carved into the top of the sign, there were eight curving slash marks.
“Eight Claws,” said Virgil. They were the first words he’d spoken since the chocolate. “Werewolf gang.”
“Are you fucking… Ethan, is he fucking kidding?” said Raine, looking around as if trying to see through the ruins around us.
Ethan shook his head. “I’ve heard of the Eight Claws. Supposed to be one of the powers in this part of the city.”
“Well that’s the best news. Are we gonna go through that?” said Raine.
“How about I ask the guide and find out?” said Ethan, shutting Raine up with a glare. I noticed that none of the other Breakers ever gave Ethan any shit after he glared at them. Given the level of danger that the others brought to the table, it was a sobering thought.
“Could go through today, but it would leave us in the Naga territories,” said Lynette.
“Nagas,” said Birgitte, her voice flat. Her fingers tightened on the hilt of her sword.
Lynette nodded. “Timber rattlers. Harder to fool than the wolves. They can sense body heat.”
“So it’d be harder to find a place to hide at night,” said Ethan, nodding.
“Wolves’d sniff us out anyway, sir,” said Gunner, sounding utterly unbothered by either prospect.
“Caught between the devil and the deep bl-“ said Baran. He was cut off by Ethan’s hand appearing around his throat. Ethan lifted the larger man with one hand, his face caught in a snarling rictus that I hadn’t seen before. I gaped at the sight of Baran scrabbling at Ethan’s arm with both hands, making no headway.
“Don’t talk about shit you don’t understand,” said Ethan. He sounded a pissed-off as I’d ever heard anyone sound. Baran gargled out something that could have been enthusiastic agreement and Ethan let him drop. He turned back to Lynette and Virgil, his face neutral as usual. I took a careful step away.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” said Ethan, not sounding sorry in any way. “Now, you were saying about hiding from the Nagas?”
Lynette held perfectly still, her eyes darting from Ethan to where Baran lay crumpled on the ground. Finally she said, “We… we can do whatever you like.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.
Ethan nodded. “Fair enough. All right, I think we should push through the Eight Claws territory and take our chances with the snakes tonight. It’ll put us that much closer to the stronghold tomorrow.”
No one argued. Apparently taking our silence as elated approval, Ethan shouldered his assault rifle and nodded to Lynette to show the way. We passed under the sign, leaving the Goblin to expire in the afternoon sunshine.
The route that Lynette took through the Eight Claws territory was even worse than the previous one; it had to have taken us ten blocks’ worth of walking to make one block of progress. Some of the boltholes and trails were small enough that Gunner and Raine had to crawl on their hands and knees while the rest of us stooped almost double. I secretly enjoyed the sight. There were advantages in being a short guy whose ancestors knew about tunnels. Still, it wasn’t a lot of fun.
It also didn’t work.
We made it about halfway through when we c
ame to a place where a smaller tunnel opened onto a partially collapsed street. Lynette took a few steps out, looking around, and Baran followed a step behind. Virgil was back in the tunnel with me and the others were spread out along the way, Gunner taking the rear.
Ethan followed Baran out into the street and then there was a clang loud enough to wake up everything in a ten mile radius as a huge metal grate slammed down over the tunnel’s entrance. A lesser clang echoed from behind us, muffled by Gunner’s bulk. A similar grate was blocking our escape that way.
We were trapped.
Grates started to rise all around us, sealing off the tunnel in sections as Human-form werewolves dressed in bright colors flooded into the street around the three trapped outside. Werewolves, were-anythings, can’t take their animal forms unless it’s nighttime or unless they’re very strong. No one that we saw was in animal form, so either they weren’t strong enough or they didn’t see us as enough of a threat to shift. Given that we were caged, I could see their point.
Outnumbered five to one, Ethan put his gun down and held his hands out as he tried to talk them down. I couldn’t hear much of what was going on out there thanks to the distance and the way that Virgil was shrieking for his mother. The Eight Claws leader called us things like rats and little snacks, but I was busy trying to figure a way out of the trap we were stuck in. “Raine,” I said. “Hammer!”
The big man