Outcast, page 23
part #1 of The Grey Gates Series
The Strump’s outstretched wing, with razor claws along its edge, caught her leg as she tried to flee, sending her toppling forwards, down into the amphitheatre. She rolled forward on instinct and bounced off two of the great, hard-edged steps before coming to a stop, the breath knocked out of her, hot and jagged pain along her leg telling her that the creature’s claws had torn through her toughened trousers and into her skin.
There was no time to be injured. She had kept hold of her weapon. It was one of the first things she had learned as a Marshal. Always keep the weapons. The torch had somehow survived the fall, still attached to the top of her shotgun. She ejected the empty magazine and slammed home her last full magazine, bringing the shotgun up, looking for the Strump, letting out an involuntary cry as she saw the creature’s open beak far too close to her face, its fetid breath washing over her.
She scrambled sideways on the ground, ignoring the agony in her leg for the moment, shotgun at her shoulder, trained on the creature. It didn’t move. Its eyes tracked her movement, expression full of hate. But the creature itself stayed where it was, splayed across the deep steps of the arena.
Max managed to get her feet under her, pulse thumping in her ears, and bit off another cry as she tried to put weight on her leg.
She swept her torch across the creature, making sure it really was down for the moment. They had all been using tranquilliser rounds, and even wounded from the cartridge strikes and the fall, the Strump wouldn’t stay down forever. Still, it was out of commission for the moment.
Not far away, she heard a groan. She turned to find Vanko on one of the top steps of the arena, his shotgun beside him. He was sitting up, grimacing as he did so.
“Blasted creature,” he said, looking at Max. “It got you?”
“Leg,” Max said, trying to take another step forward and almost falling again. She muttered a curse she’d heard Faddei use more than once.
“Sit down. I’ve got some field dressing,” Vanko said, getting to his feet and descending the steps towards her. “Pav. Yev. You still with us?” he called as he joined Max.
“Yes,” Yevhen said. He appeared at the top of the arena, next to the fallen Strump, Pavla beside him. “This thing is huge. How in hells did they get a mature adult here?”
“That’s a good question,” Max said, thinking back to the bar and the tunnel they had come through. There was no way that the Strump would have fitted through the bar’s front doors, and no possible way that even Grayson Forster could have smuggled a full-grown Strump into a city bar without being noticed. Almost grateful for the distraction giving her something else to think about other than her injuries, she lowered herself onto one of the seats, trying not to cry out in pain.
“I don’t see anything else,” Pavla said, eyes travelling over Max. “Can you walk?” It was a calm, professional question. Pavla, and the others, needed to know if Max was capable of working with them.
“Give me a minute,” Max said. Vanko had pulled a field dressing from one of his pockets and she had to bite back another cry as he slapped it onto her leg over the ragged tear in her trousers, tying it around her leg. The white surface of the bandage stained quickly with her blood and he added another layer. The dressings were designed as an emergency measure to help a Marshal survive and get to safety. Max had used them before and knew that it would sting like nothing else when it was taken off, but it should help her keep moving for now.
“Try that,” he suggested.
She stood up and put her weight on the leg. Red hot agony coursed through her. But her leg held. She nodded once, eyes watering.
“I can still shoot. Someone else better take the lead,” she suggested, shuffling her way to the nearest set of shallow steps. Before she could start making her way upward, Pavla and Yevhen came down.
“We can’t see any other movement on this level,” Pavla said. “We need to go down.”
“And there’s an open gate,” Yevhen pointed out as the pair moved past Vanko and Max.
“Alright,” Max said. It wasn’t the craziest idea she’d ever heard. She made her way, slowly and painfully, after the other three, pausing for a moment to get a painkilling tab out of her pockets, slapping it against her neck. A heartbeat or two later and relief washed over her, the pain dulling to a more manageable level. It wouldn’t last for long, but for now she was functional. “I only have one magazine left,” she told the others.
“Same,” Vanko said, and grimaced. “We should have brought more.”
“Just be careful with your shots,” Yevhen suggested, practical as always. He and Pavla had arrived at the edge of the pit, and Max was somehow not surprised to see another spell ring embedded into the rim of the pit.
“That’s quite a drop,” Pavla said, leaning over the side. “There’s another open gate here.”
Pavla had been right about the drop, Max realised. Now that she was at the edge, the pit was about the height of three humans, from its base to the metal ring they were standing beside. She trained her light on the crumpled heap in the pit. Another dead human, a pool of blood around him and another dart gun lying on the ground beside him.
“We’ll go first,” Vanko said, glancing at Max. “We can catch you.”
Max grimaced, not liking the idea, but she didn’t have any other option. There was no way she could manage a drop and roll into the pit. “Alright,” she said.
Max kept watch while the others tossed their shotguns down first, the torches making crazy patterns on the walls as their owners dropped into the pit, all of them rolling in smooth movements, coming back to their feet without a hitch. Pavla went over to the crumpled man on the ground and came away quickly, shaking her head. As dead as he looked, then.
“It smells like a butcher’s shop down here,” Vanko complained. He came to the side of the pit and held up his hands. “Come on, Max.”
Max dropped her shotgun as well and lowered herself over the side, clinging on to the metal spell ring as long as she could, until she was stretched out down the side of the pit before letting go, sliding down the wall, the packed earth scraping along her clothes and getting into her nose and hair as she fell.
Hands took hold of her before she reached the ground, one of them clamping down on the wound in her leg, making her bite off a cry, but she was set on the ground with minimum fuss. Vanko was right. It did smell like a butcher’s shop. A shoddy butcher’s shop that didn’t care about hygiene. The place stank of old blood and rotting meat, making her eyes sting.
Vanko handed her the shotgun and frowned at her. She wondered what she looked like and brushed some dirt off her front, trying to stand straighter. She didn’t want the others trying to protect her. They needed to look after themselves.
“I’ll manage,” she told him, breathless from the white-hot pain coursing through her.
Slightly to her surprise and relief, the others took her at her word and moved towards the nearest set of open gates. Max followed them as best she could. The field dressing had hardened, as it was supposed to, making her leg stiff. The slide down the pit wall had woken the pain up again, despite the painkiller, and she had to bite her lip more than once to hold in a cry.
The gates were half the height of the pit walls, made of heavy metal welded into a grate pattern, the gaps small enough that not even a crow spider would be able to get through.
The pair of gates that they went through had been flung open with some force, one of the gates buckled as if from a heavy weight. Max frowned, wondering if the Keliotrope could have done that. She wasn’t sure. The creature was huge and powerful, but the gates were heavy and seemed designed to contain something like a Keliotrope. Which meant there might be another creature on the loose. Just what they needed.
Through the gates they found themselves in another tunnel, this one as high and wide as the one that had led from the Sorcerer’s Mistress. On the other side of the tunnel here, though, were more metal bars. Cages.
Movement in the nearest cage drew all their attention, and the Marshals trained their torches on it.
A small, furred creature sat in the middle of the cage, staring back at them with glowing green eyes. It had large, triangular shaped ears that twitched as it looked back at them, its black-and-tan striped fur rippling as it breathed.
“That’s a shadow-fox, isn’t it?” Yevhen asked. “I thought they were extinct.”
“It looks like one,” Vanko agreed. He swept his torch over the cage. “Looks secure, at least.”
Max turned her light to the next cage and saw a pair of giant fangs gleaming through the bars. She took an involuntary step back, finger on the trigger, relaxing a fraction when she realised that the creature seemed secure.
A shout from outside the tunnel drew their attention. Pavla went to the gate to answer, and moments later, Faddei joined them. He was carrying extra ammunition and a shotgun of his own, handing out extra shotgun magazines as he scowled at the cage.
“I’ve sent for more containment for the Strump,” he said, still frowning, “but we’re going to need more, aren’t we? What else is here?”
“We’ve just got here,” Pavla told him.
“What the hells is going on?” Faddei asked, a hard edge to his voice.
“Supernatural fights,” Vanko said, in an equally hard voice.
“This has been here a while,” Max said, and heard the others murmur agreement. “There is no possible way that the local police didn’t know something was going on here,” Max said, remembering Ruutti’s odd reaction to the mention of the Sorcerer’s Mistress.
The small pen light on her shotgun didn’t provide a strong enough light to reach far along the tunnel, but all she could see were more cages.
She wanted to be sick. It was one thing for her and the other Marshals to hunt down and contain creatures that had escaped from the Wild and were a danger to the city’s population. As with all the other Marshals, she did her best to tranquillise and contain the threat. Raymund and his team would relocate as many creatures as possible back into the Wild. Killing was a last resort.
But this was something altogether different. Creatures taken from their own habitats. Brought here and thrown into a pit as entertainment for the crowd. And in the process, no doubt, making Grayson Forster very wealthy.
She remembered the quiet, wary people on the street above and thought that most of the bar’s neighbours probably knew that something was going on under their feet. Something connected with the bar. She wondered just how many of the bar’s patrons also knew. The wannabe magicians, and those who wanted a taste of the dark side of the city. This was probably too dark for a lot of them. Or so she hoped.
“Yes,” Faddei said, voice dark, agreeing with her.
“It’s likely that the Strump killed the two men outside,” Pavla said, “but we need to make sure there isn’t anything else on the loose.”
“Yes,” Faddei agreed. He glanced across at Max. “The containment team should be here soon. They’re going to need someone to watch their backs. I saw a ladder just inside the gate,” he added, before Max could say anything more.
Effectively dismissing her without saying the words. Even though it was the sensible thing to do, it still stung. Faddei would be a more than adequate replacement for her. So Max just nodded and made her way back out to the pit itself. There was, indeed, a ladder tucked away against the wall. An extending one that should reach to the top of the pit.
She tried to ignore her stinging eyes as she dragged the ladder out of the gate and to the side of the pit, struggling to get it set up and secure enough that she could get out. Faddei was just being practical. With the leg wound she had, she would only slow them down. And they could not afford to be distracted by her injury. She did not want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt. Not ever again.
Chapter twenty-three
By the time she reached the top of the ladder, the painkiller she had taken had worn off. Each step was accompanied by a fresh jolt of white-hot pain and she was short-tempered and hissing curses as she limped her way up the steps to the top of the arena. By the time she reached the ground level, the double layer of bandage Vanko had put on her leg was soaked through with blood and she was light-headed, vision wavering.
The Strump was still where they had left it, its eyes closed. That didn’t mean it was completely asleep, she knew. But it was a little bit of good news, at least.
The magic that Yevhen and Pavla had created was still active, the faint mist giving the smallest hint of light, serving mainly to remind her of how big and how dark the space was. Her torch didn’t reach very far. She tried not to think about what else might be out there in the shadows, waiting for her to drop her guard.
Max searched in her pockets for more painkiller, her fingers shaking. Marshals were only supposed to use one patch in the field, but she wasn’t going to be any use to anyone if she passed out from pain.
Before she could find another dose, a faint noise in the dark caught her attention. She straightened, shotgun ready at her shoulder. It hadn’t sounded like a creature. More like footsteps. But two-legged things could be dangerous, too.
“I’m a Marshal and I’m armed. Show yourself,” she called into the dark, trying to sound full of authority and not like she was about to collapse. Her voice was far higher than it should be, and sounded weak even in her own ears.
A figure detached from the dark, coming into the light from her torch. An ordinary-looking human man, dressed in dark, casual clothing. Someone she wouldn’t look twice at on the street.
But he wasn’t on the street. He was here. Standing at the edge of an underground amphitheatre, not that far from a sleeping Strump and under the guard of her shotgun. He looked faintly familiar, and she remembered the group that Faddei had led out of the arena, and the one who had looked back. It might be the same man.
She remembered, too, the dark-clothed man who had been watching her earlier in the day, when she had been checking out the second crime scene. He had been too far away for her to be sure, but the height and build looked about right for this man. Her skin prickled. Had he been following her?
“Marshal Ortis,” he said, sending another chill through her. He knew her name. He was definitely not here by chance. “You do find yourself in the most interesting places.”
“Do I know you?” Max asked, keeping her gun levelled on him. A tranquilliser round would do some serious damage to a human.
He smiled, and ice formed around her heart. She had seen that expression many times before on predators.
“We’ve never been formally introduced,” he said.
He was familiar. Max just had no idea where from. If he hadn’t drawn attention to himself by coming back to the underground chamber, she might never had noticed him or remembered him. For a moment, she wondered if he had been one of the bystanders on the street with the Keliotrope. But that made no sense, as he would have had to get ahead of the Marshals on their way down here.
Then she remembered one of the people in the amphitheatre saying that other people had left. The Marshals hadn’t met anyone else in the tunnel. Which meant that there must be at least one more way in and out. That made sense. Even Grayson Forster wouldn’t want to bring illegal creatures through his bar.
“How did you get in here?” Max asked. The edges of her vision were hazy, but she kept her gun focused on the unnamed man. He was dangerous. She wanted to shoot him. The temptation was there, her trigger finger ready. But he hadn’t actually threatened her. And Marshals avoided shooting humans if at all possible.
A babble of excited voices and bright lights in the distance cut off whatever he might have said. The scientists were on their way, doubtless ecstatic to have the chance to study a Strump up close.
When Max looked back at the man, he had gone. Vanished into the dark. She spat a curse and took a step forward, cursing again as her leg almost gave out under her. The fresh blood was softening up the hard cast of the bandage and it was losing its structure. She braced herself, sweeping her light in a slow, steady arc. Nothing. No one apart from the scientists, with their over-sized torches and chatter.
“Max,” one of the figures at the front of the group said. After a moment, she recognised Raymund. That was bad. She should have recognised him right away. “Are you alright? Your leg-”
Max didn’t hear whatever else he might have had to say as the ground rose up to meet her, darkness swallowing her whole.
The lights around her were muted, gentle on her stinging eyes as she opened them. Everything was hazy for a moment, then her sight cleared enough to recognise that she was not where she had been. She was in some kind of treatment room, covered in white sheets, with a cool numbness spreading along her leg.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” a familiar voice said. Glenda, the nurse practitioner, appeared in Max’s line of sight and smiled. “You’re in the clinic. It’s late afternoon. The Marshal’s medical team brought you in early this morning. We had to cut off your trousers, I’m sorry, but we’ve cleaned out and dressed the wounds in your leg. Twenty-eight stitches. All the important bits and pieces are intact and the muscles will heal in time. You’ll need more antibiotics and to take it easy for at least a few days, but you’re going to be fine.”
Max blinked, trying to take in all the information. She opened her mouth and found a straw placed between her lips.
“Drink. It’s supposed to be cherry flavoured. It’s basically water with some more healing and rehydration in it,” Glenda told her, in the same cheerful voice.
Max took a sip, and her eyebrows lifted. It did, in fact, taste like cherries. It slid down her throat, making her realise how dry her mouth was, and she took another sip, then tried to sit up. Bruises woke up all along her back. She remembered hitting a car at some point in the long night.
“Give me a second,” Glenda said, taking the cup and straw away. She pressed a button on the side of the bed and it lifted so Max was sitting more upright. “There, that’s better. Here, you can have this,” she said, pressing the cup and straw into Max’s hands. “We had to give you some strong painkillers to clean out that wound, so you’re probably feeling a bit fuzzy-headed.”
