And then he was out and up into the fog-strewn sky.
The corridor was natural rock, unimproved by human hands. The floor of beaten dirt was strewn with stones the size of pebbles to small boulders and was nearly blocked in places by rock-falls from the roof and walls. Some of the falls looked recent, perhaps caused by the explosion that had given them access to the corridor.
Black Shadow was a three-dimensional ink spot, the darkness that was part of him soaking up the beams from their flashlights. “Which way?” he asked, his whisper echoing eerily off the tunnel’s ceiling and walls.
The corridor ran due north and south from the point they’d broken into. As far as Ray could see it was dead-dark in both directions. Neither could he hear anything. Battle, however, didn’t hesitate. “North. If we go any farther south we’ll miss Ellis Island when we turn east toward the bay.”
Black Shadow nodded and moved silently off into the darkness. Ray let him get ten or fifteen yards ahead before following. Shadow was good, Ray thought. You could hardly hear him moving in the darkness that was his natural element.
Shadow suddenly hissed. Ray stopped and held out a palm to signal the others. He crept up to join Black Shadow and found him standing in front of a door set into the east wall of the corridor. Shadow had turned off his personal darkness, satisfied with the natural blackness that surrounded them all.
“What is it?” Ray whispered. Something in the tunnel’s atmosphere made him automatically lower his voice as he pointed at the door and the face carved into the rock beside it. The door was made of wooden planks banded with iron strips. The stone face had a certain rough-hewn majesty to it, but underneath it all it was just the face of a teenage boy.
“Bloat,” Shadow and Ray said in unison.
They looked at each other and nodded.
“I’ll get the others,” Ray said.
They inspected the door carefully, trying to decide what to do. Battle finally nodded at Puckett. “Pull it out of its frame,” he told the ace. “Shepherd and Ray, cover him.”
Ray nodded, but said, “Maybe you try the handle first. It might not be locked.”
“Not locked?” Battle said.
Ray shrugged. “Who knows? Have you got this Bloat character totally figured out?”
“No,” Battle admitted reluctantly.
Puckett looked at him and he nodded. The ace tried the handle, and the door creaked slowly forward, Puckett standing unconcernedly in the center of the entrance.
Ray heard a sound over their heads like stone grating against stone, and shouted, “Look out!”
But it was too late. A trapdoor opened and something red and viscous flowed out, totally enveloping Puckett, splashing on Danny and also on Ackroyd. Ray dodged the deluge as he tackled Danny, but was too late to pull her totally out of the way. The liquid coated the front of her right leg from the knee to the ankle, and also splattered her left leg. After a moment of stunned silence a white envelope fluttered down out of the trapdoor and landed right on Puckett’s head. It stuck there in the thick liquid. Puckett turned to look at the others, holding his hands up and out in a gesture that bespoke of his bewilderment.
“What the hell —” Ray began. He reached down and gingerly touched the liquid running down Danny’s calf. He rubbed his fingertips together. “Paint,” he said. “Red paint.”
“Give me that envelope,” Battle said angrily.
Puckett reached up with paint-soaked fingers and carefully took it from the top of his head. He handed it to Battle, who tore it open impatiently.
“‘I could have killed you just now,’” Battle read aloud, “‘but I didn’t. Remember that. Next time it won’t be for fun.’” Battle looked up, outraged. “He’s playing with me. The fat bastard thinks he’s playing with me!”
Ray looked at Danny, his face inches from hers, her hard body half under his.
“I think you can let me up now,” she said.
Ray scrambled to his feet, giving her a hand up. She thanked him.
It had really begun now. The score was Bloat 1, Battle 0, even though no one had been hurt. But that didn’t matter to Battle. Ray could see that he was seething. He wanted Bloat’s ass, if Bloat had an ass.
Still, no matter how pissed he was, Ray noted that he was careful to set Black Shadow ahead on point, put Ray second, and station himself, covered by a paint-soaked Crypt Kicker, well to the rear.
Modular Man was halfway to Brooklyn before he was out of the fog. The stuff was enveloping the entire city. He banked high and came down on Ebbets Field out of the sun. He could see Katzenback in a moving humvee — it looked as if it was heading for the Verrazano Narrows Bridge approaches.
Modular Man dropped out of the sky like a fighter ace, tucked, came down feet-first, landed neatly in the passenger seat.
Katzenback gave a yelp and sideswiped a cab. The taxi driver howled obscenities in Arabic and slammed on the brakes.
“Sorry, Horace,” Modular Man said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Katzenback pulled over into a loading zone. He recovered quickly, though he was still a bit wild-eyed. “What do you want?”
“Peanut butter jar.”
“Heh heh.” Katzenback grinned nervously. “What peanut butter jar?” Modular Man groped under the seat and pulled it out. Katzenback shrugged. “At least I tried.”
The Syrian taxi driver stepped up to his door and began shrieking abuse.
“I want you to know this isn’t my idea,” Modular Man said. “I’m obeying orders, same as you.”
“Whose orders?”
The taxi driver kept screaming. Modular Man, without result, gestured for him to be quiet. “I can’t say. But switching sides wasn’t my idea. Please tell General Zappa.”
“You got jumped? Look, if you got jumped and are back now, we can work something…”
“Later. I hope.”
Modular Man rose into the sky and sped north, toward Aces High.
Even that didn’t make the taxi driver shut up.
Warm air caressed Ray’s face as he moved into the narrow corridor behind the door. He stopped and put his hand against one of the walls. The rock was warm to the touch when it should have been cool. He didn’t like the feel of it. He didn’t like the way the air smelled. It was hot and sweaty and tasted like fear.
He wondered if this was the result of the spell that Black Shadow had warned them about. He glanced back at the rest of the team. Despite the poor lighting, he could see the strain on the others’ faces. Strained expressions wouldn’t be totally unexpected under the circumstances, but was it natural stress, or was Bloat playing with their minds? Black Shadow might know. He’d been through it before.
Ray hurried up the corridor, catching up to the man in black.
“Shadow,” he hissed in a stage whisper. “Wait up, dude.”
The ace stopped and turned, his face shielded by the darkness that enveloped him like a mother’s arms.
“That fear you told us about,” Ray asked. “Can you feel it now?”
The darkness shifted, as if Shadow were looking about. “Yes.” His voice was deep and unshaken. “There it comes.” A hand pointed out of the blackness, up-tunnel where two figures were approaching. They were young men, probably in their teens, and even in the dim light Ray could see crazed expressions on their ugly, manic faces. One had a garrote dangling from his hands, the other carried a large, shiny knife upraised and poised to strike.
“Christ,” Ray said, “they’re ugly fuckers. No wonder they spooked you.”
“You can see them?” Shadow asked. “Last time only I could —”
He was turning, but it was too late. The schitzed-out one with the knife struck, plunging the weapon into Black Shadow’s back above the right shoulder blade. The ace screamed in pain, anger, and surprise. The maniac crooned in pleasure and pulled his knife out of Shadow’s back. He raised it above his head again, eyes gleaming brighter than the knife blade.