Outcast, page 22
part #1 of The Grey Gates Series
“The room was well concealed, and the owner was, er, not pleased when it was discovered,” Max said.
“That’s Grayson Forster, isn’t it?” Faddei asked.
They were speaking in low tones, and standing far enough away from Grayson that he should not be able to hear them. Still, the man was glaring at them.
“It is,” Max confirmed. “You know him?”
“Only by reputation,” Faddei answered. He held out his hand and Max realised she was still holding the syringe. Faddei took it from her and waved one of the scientists over to take it from him. He then beckoned Vanko over. “Gather the others. We’re going into the bar,” Faddei told Vanko. “You too, Max,” he added.
Max opened her mouth to protest. It was instinctive. Faddei knew perfectly well that she did not like working with others around her. And he knew the reasons why. Nine highly trained warriors of the Order had been sent with her to the Grey Gates, and had died awful, agonizing deaths around her. Their faces and screams came back to her in nightmares at least once a week. She did not want to watch anyone else die around her.
But her boss had given an order, and had made up his mind. She snapped her mouth shut, checking her weapons instead.
The other Marshal just nodded and turned away to the vehicles gathered further along the street. Max saw another pair of figures bearing Marshals’ badges, who came forward at Vanko’s whistle. Pavla and Yevhen Bilak. The only married pair of Marshals, they always worked together. The other Marshals were carrying shotguns, too, extra ammunition tucked in their thigh holsters in the same way as Max had stored hers.
“Lead the way,” Faddei said.
Chapter twenty-two
Grayson Forster did not want to let the Marshals into the bar. He stood at the top of the steps, his bodyguards flanking him, and glared at Max as she and the others approached. Max kept her shotgun pointing at the ground, not wanting to give his bodyguards any reason to get aggressive.
“This is private property,” Grayson said, words snapping into the night air. “You have no authority here.”
“You had a Keliotrope in your storage room,” Max said. “We want to make sure you don’t have anything else in there that doesn’t belong.”
Grayson glared at her, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
“Son, I suggest you stand aside. One way or the other, we are going to search the place,” Faddei said.
Grayson glared at Faddei, then slowly took a step to the side, his bodyguards following. It seemed that the younger man knew precisely who Faddei was. Max wondered just what kind of reputation the head Marshal had to make the Forster stand back so easily. “You can be sure the council will hear about this,” Grayson said.
“I look forward to that meeting,” Faddei said, sounding sincere. He waved the other Marshals ahead.
With Faddei watching their backs, Max led the others down the stairs and through the red-draped room to the main doors of the bar.
“Is that an actual pointy hat?” Vanko asked as they went through the entrance. “Have you ever seen a witch wearing one?”
“No,” Pavla, the other female Marshal said, laughter in her voice. “And I’m pretty sure that was a nursery rhyme carved on the wizard’s staff.”
Max didn’t reply, focusing on the room ahead of her and trying to ignore the prickle of unease at having other people gathered around her as she walked into potential danger. The smell of incense had almost faded, with the doors having been opened. The bar’s lights were still dimmed, but there was enough light to see. To her shock, she spotted a few people still in the bar. There was a pool of blood and scattered medical swabs where the injured woman had been. Max assumed that the medical team had taken her to hospital.
“Everyone out!” Max lowered her gun to hold up the seven-pointed star, the metal gleaming in the light. “Out, now!” she added, when no one moved.
“Or you can stay here and get eaten,” Vanko added. “Your choice.”
That got the humans moving, finally. They rushed for the door.
“I’ll do a sweep in here. Make sure everyone is out,” Faddei said. “The rest of you, keep going.”
Even though his injuries had taken him off active service, the head Marshal could more than look after himself, so Max swallowed her instinctive urge to go with him and make sure that the bar was empty, instead heading for the far wall and the partly open door.
The interior of the room was as dark as it had been before. She nudged the door further open with her boot, gun ready. She could not see anything. Muttering a curse, she reached back to her ammunition belt, drawing out the small, powerful pen-light that sat next to her back-up gun. She clipped the torch to the holder on the top of the shotgun, setting the beam as wide as possible.
Moments later, the light from her torch was joined by three other light sources as the other Marshals set up their own torches. That done, Max led them on into the room.
The smell of incense was so strong that her eyes started watering and she stopped for a moment to let her eyes adjust.
The room they were looking at was simply a dark, open space. There was another pair of doors opposite the one they had come through, these doors wide open, hanging sideways as if something large and angry had broken through. Something like the Keliotrope.
Max took a step forward and heard a crunch under her boot. She swept her weapon down, aiming the light at the floor, and saw scattered remnants of what looked like glass jars. Doubtless they were the source of the incense that was almost visible in the air.
“Incense,” Pavla muttered. “Idiots.”
Max silently agreed, and led her group on to the next set of doors.
There was another dark space beyond the second set of doors, a warm draft of air carrying a mix of unpleasant scents. Animal waste. Rotting meat. Blood. And more incense.
They moved forward in a loose, co-ordinated group, without needing to speak. This was not the first time any of them had gone into the dark to flush out an unknown predator.
The beams from their torches showed a large, unlit passageway with a packed earth floor and walls formed of ancient brick, the mortar crumbling in places. Max tried not to think about the buildings overhead. There was no reason to think that the ceiling would cave in. Not now.
Their torches lit up a small space around them, but there was plenty of darkness ahead.
“Can anyone send a light ahead?” Max asked. She could, but it would take valuable energy and concentration she could not spare being the person in the lead.
She felt the stirring of magic behind her. She didn’t know the other Marshals well enough to know who it was, but a moment later a faint mist spread through the group carrying a shimmer with it. The mist moved ahead of Max, coating the walls and ceiling, amplifying the torch light enough that Max could see further ahead. They would have much more warning of anything approaching them.
“Thank you,” Max said and began moving forward again, keeping her pace slow and steady. The ground looked solid, but that was no guarantee it would hold, or that there weren’t hidden traps.
After what seemed an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes, she saw another pair of doors ahead. Like the entrance to this tunnel, they were knocked aside as if something large had barrelled through them. Beyond the doors was more pitch dark. The smells were stronger here, too.
“Hold up a moment. We’ll make some more light,” Yevhen said.
Max stopped, keeping her weapon trained on the dark opening ahead as more magic rose behind her, a brush against her senses, and another cloud of mist drifted ahead of her, going through the doors and spreading out so that she could see that the doorway was empty.
“Thank you,” she said to the pair, then started moving again, with the same caution as before.
They made it through the doors with no difficulty, and then Max’s foot struck against a solid object. Unfamiliar magic trailed up her leg. She stopped at once, aiming her torch down.
There was a heavy band of metal sunk into the earthen floor, the gleam of it stretching to either side. From the way it curved away into the dark, she would bet a month’s wages that it formed a circle. And there was powerful magic set into the ring. Max shook her leg, trying to cast off the trace of magic. It was fading too slowly for her liking.
“A spell ring?” Vanko asked, sounding as if he did not believe his own senses.
Max did not blame him. Spell rings were usually crafted by powerful magicians in their own workshops, as a place of safety to practice spells. Or containment to allow a spell to come to maturity, she added, remembering the gift that Queran had left her. Even that spell ring had been a tightly confined space. Most magicians only made their containment circle large enough for them and a small worktable. Not something of this great size, embedded into the earth far underground.
“There’s another one,” Pavla said, a light shining ahead of Max.
Max moved her light, too, and saw that Pavla was right. There was another heavy band of metal embedded into the ground several paces ahead, its curve a little more pronounced. She raised her torch, wondering what the rings were protecting, and had to blink to make sure her eyes were not deceiving her.
“Is that an amphitheatre?” she asked, disbelief in every word.
“It looks like it,” Vanko said, matching her tone. “Pav, Yev, are you seeing this?”
“We are,” Yevhen agreed, voice grim.
Ahead of them was a large circle of what looked like giant steps carved into the earth, the steps going down to a bottom that Max could not see from here. But she had seen a similar design in ancient theatres above ground. The giant steps were, in fact, seats, with shallower sets of steps cut at intervals for people to make their way up and down the structure. She could not imagine what it was doing here, under a residential building, at the end of a corridor leading from the Sorcerer’s Mistress.
Max swept her torch slowly from side to side. The air around them was heavy, dead on her shoulders. The magic of the spell rings was probably keeping any sound from the amphitheatre contained.
Her light bounced off something metallic on the ground next to the nearest set of steps. Next to the gleaming object, there was a heap on the ground.
Stepping carefully over the spell ring, not wanting more unfamiliar magic crawling over her, she moved forward, the others with her.
As they drew closer, the metallic object turned out to be a dart gun, and the lump on the ground was a person. He appeared to be a human male, lying partly on his back, blood pooling on the ground around him. Not long dead, Max guessed. The man’s t-shirt was saturated with blood, almost his entire torso cut open, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling overhead.
“The Keliotrope didn’t do this,” Vanko noted, crouching beside the body for a closer look. “The cuts are too thin. This looks more like fangs or razor claws.”
“So, there might be something else on the loose in here,” Pavla concluded. She and Yevhen had stopped a few paces from the body, keeping watch on their surroundings.
“Yes,” Vanko nodded, getting to his feet. He aimed his torch ahead, into the theatre, and his brows lifted.
Max took a step forward, following his gaze.
There were about ten rows of seats leading down to a deep pit at the bottom. From her vantage point, Max could see a pair of metal gates in the side of the pit, darkness behind them.
There was another crumpled heap in the bottom of the pit. Another dead person, Max suspected.
“I’ll wager it’s a gladiator pit,” Pavla said, voice flat.
“Gladiators?” Vanko echoed, disbelief back in his voice. But he wasn’t questioning Pavla, not really. Max understood the question. She was having difficulty believing her own eyes, too.
As she swept her light around the part of the pit she could see, and then up the rows of seats, she saw indistinct movement at the edge of the light. She must have made a sound, as the others trained their weapons ahead, too. With the concentration of torches, Max could make out a group of people huddled together on one of the middle tiers of the seats.
With the distance, and poor light, Max couldn’t be sure, but she thought they seemed frightened. She didn’t think any of them were injured, but the shadows made it difficult to tell.
Before she could move towards the people, soft sounds behind them made them all turn, weapons lifted. Faddei stopped at the edge of the light, lifting a hand in a peaceful gesture against their weapons. He was a little out of breath, the seven-point star at his chest gleaming in response to the spell circles.
“Damned idiots,” he said. “There was a group hiding under one of the tables. I almost shot them.”
Max lifted a brow. There would be more to that story than just stubborn youngsters hiding. Faddei did not lose his temper easily. She squashed her curiosity for now.
The head Marshal had seen the dead man, brows lifting as he ran his torch over the body, assessing the injuries. “That wasn’t the Keliotrope,” he commented.
“No,” Vanko agreed. “And there are more people over there.”
Faddei spat a curse that made Max suppress an inappropriate grin. Her boss had a colourful way of expressing himself. “Let’s get these idiots out of here, then we can search properly,” Faddei suggested, moving ahead into the dark.
Max took a few running steps to catch up with him to take the lead again, heading around the top edge of the amphitheatre. As they walked, Max kept her light moving and spotted another pair of metal gates leading into the pit below them.
“Those gates are open,” she commented to the group.
“I see it,” Pavla agreed. “Yev and I will keep back watch,” she said.
It made Max’s skin crawl to think of what might have killed the dead man, and now be in the dark with them. At the same time, she could not help wondering exactly where the Keliotrope had come from. She couldn’t see any ladders or steps up from the pit, and the great monster had not looked like it was good at climbing. So how had it got out of the pit, if it had been in the pit? And if it hadn’t been in the pit, where had it been?
When they reached the level above the huddled people, Max stopped, staring down. There were more people than she had thought. At least twenty. As the Marshals’ lights landed on them, a few put up their hands, as if waving the light away.
“Stop it. Do you want it to find us again?” one man called up.
“Turn the light out,” another woman pleaded.
“What is it?” Max asked, not moving her light. These people were not here by chance. They all looked well dressed and there were no obvious restraints that she could see. They had come here to see whatever illegal activity was supposed to happen in the pit below them.
“A Strump,” one of the quieter members of the group said. He straightened a bit, peering into their lights. “Who are you?”
“A Strump?” Max repeated, not sure she could believe that. The giant, winged predators were usually found in colder climates, and preferred the high mountains. They only came to this part of the world during particularly hard winters. She had only ever seen one before, flying above the Wild, looking for other supernatural creatures to pick up for its next meal.
“We’re Marshals,” Faddei said, before anyone in the group could answer. “Come on, move. We’ll get you out of here.”
“The others got away,” the woman said, her voice high and shaking. “Left us to die.”
“Well, you’re not dead,” Faddei said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Get up and move.”
“But the Strump-” one of the group objected, drowned out by the others moving, coming up the narrow steps cut into the earth as if their lives depended on it.
As the people moved, Max sensed rather than saw movement overhead. She swept her weapon and light up just as one of the darker patches above them detached from the ceiling and swooped down.
The creature that flew down had a wingspan to match the Keliotrope’s length from tip to tail, its mottled, dense feathers blending with the shadows as it flew. There was a beak that would be enough to give most people nightmares and yellow eyes that seemed to bore into Max as the creature descended.
She fired. Unlike the Keliotrope, the Strump didn’t have an armoured hide. The cartridge slammed home, sending the creature off course. It shrieked in displeasure, the sound grating through Max’s skull.
“Hold it off, and I’ll get these people out,” Faddei said.
“Right,” Max said, kneeling on the ground to make herself as small a target as possible. She felt movement around her and risked a quick glance, finding that Vanko, Pavla and Yevhen were all kneeling with her, all of them facing in different directions.
“Did you see where it went?” Pavla asked.
“No. Max hit it, though,” Vanko said.
Max didn’t answer, keeping her focus ahead of her. She happened to be facing the direction that Faddei was moving, taking the crowd of people back through the tunnel that led to the Sorcerer’s Mistress. The people were mostly moving quickly, huddled together, but one paused, looking back at the kneeling Marshals. In the poor light, she could not be sure, but she did not think he looked frightened. Rather, he seemed fascinated by what he was leaving behind.
A chill worked over Max’s skin. These people had been here to witness something terrible in the pit. And while most of them had been rightly terrified by the Strump on the loose, there was one exception.
Before she could call out to Faddei, the Strump swept down from the ceiling again, heading for the group of people. She fired, making sure she was aiming high over the people’s heads. The creature screamed, changing direction, heading for her instead. She kept firing and heard the flat reports of the other Marshals’ weapons around her.
It took all four of them to bring the creature down, the Strump falling to the ground with an impact that rattled Max’s teeth, the creature’s momentum carrying it forward, sliding across the earth, past the two spell circles, heading for Max.
Too late, she realised it was not going to stop in time. She scrambled, trying to get to her feet and move, the bruises she had from hitting the car earlier slowing her down.
