“What the hell is it with those guns? They didn’t do shit.”
He holsters his gun.
“Of course they do. My people took down more of them than you did with that flashy sword trick.”
“Yeah, after you shot them fifty times. What kind of half-assed weapons are those?”
“Nonlethals,” says Sola. “Keyed to stun the brain and muscular function of living organisms. I guess those things aren’t quite technically alive. Not the way we normally define it.”
I look at Wells.
“You brought nonlethals down here?”
He looks right back at me.
“We’re not here to slaughter. We’re looking for information and to capture anyone carrying out extranatural activities in the tunnels, whether it’s Saint Nick or an Angra sect.”
“Looks like you killed them pretty dead anyway.”
“Yes. A lousy necessity,” he says. He shouts down the tracks. “Does anyone have a live one?”
A voice comes down the tunnel.
“A couple over here, sir.”
“Right. Bag them and get them back to Vigil headquarters right now. I want the Shonin to have a look at them.”
“Want to hear a theory? Two really,” I say.
“Make them fast,” says Wells.
“The Shonin said the chop-shop bodies might be something to house Qliphoth. The way the crazies were moving, remind you of anything?”
“It was a little strange. What are you getting at?”
“Eaters and Diggers. Two of the most dangerous Qliphoth. They’d be good guard dogs if you wanted to keep something safe.”
Wells watches his team wrap up the prisoners. They use some kind of expansion foam instead of cuffs on the arms and legs. Slide a harness with a rubber bit over each of their heads so they can’t bite. Then zipper them into body bags with ventilation holes.
“You could be right. We’ll let the Shonin decide.”
They set the prisoners on hoodoo platforms like floating stretchers and glide them down the way we came, four agents holding on to the body and two riding shotgun.
“Want to hear the second theory?”
“Go on.”
“We were ratted out.”
Wells sighs. A few of his people continue to steal looks at me as they work.
“This again. You just said these things were guard dogs. You don’t warn guard dogs. You just leave them in the junkyard for kids climbing over the fence.”
“But what if they’re not here all the time? What if they were here just for us?”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe it does. A little, sir,” says Sola. “This is a maintenance spur. Crews must work here all the time, but none of them have reported any trouble. Yet when we showed up, the creatures attacked without hesitation.”
Wells looks up and down the track like he’s trying to see into the dark and find something to shoot down the theory.
“Without further evidence I don’t want either of you talking to anyone about this. Things are hard enough for these people without putting the idea of a traitor in their heads.”
“Yes, sir,” says Sola.
Before I can say anything, one of Wells’s people shouts down the tunnel.
“We have something up here.”
We move up to the marshals. One is staring at a video monitor. She guides a flexible line with a camera on the end into a hole in the wall. There isn’t any dirt or dust on the debris around the hole. It’s fresh. I know Wells notices it too because he gives me a “Don’t say a word” look.
“You see anything?” he says to the marshal.
“No activity, but markings on the walls. There’s a lot of debris. Some of it looks like bones. Some . . .” She stares into the monitor, studying the scene. “It could be more human remains, sir. Wait. Damn.”
“Watch your language,” says Wells. “What do you see?”
“I think it’s a light switch. And wires. There’s power in there.”
“Who has functioning night vision?” Wells shouts.
A few seconds later a marshal comes over and hands Wells a set of goggles. He puts them on. I try to see past him into the dark.
“You’re not going in there alone, are you? I just said there might be Diggers around.”
“No,” he says. “You’re coming with me. If you’re that het up about it, you can go first.”
A marshal hands me a set of goggles.
“Thanks. But you can go in first. I have this thing about getting my head bitten off.”
I reload the Colt and put on the goggles. The world goes green and flat and very bright.
“You ready?” says Wells.
“Hell no.”
Wells gets down on his knees. The hole is only waist-high, like something crawled out of it. He goes through and I follow. The bite on my neck hurts like hell. The last time I got bit by a dead man bad things happened. Like I almost went zombie. This time I’m going to see Allegra before anything interesting happens.
The inside of the cave is extremely nondramatic in the sense that nothing comes out of the shadows to eat our faces. Wells finds the light switch and turns it on. The cave fills with light and we take our goggles off.
He was right. The subway line runs right next to one of the old walking-dead tunnels. The area where we’re standing is about fifty feet across and stretches into darkness at both ends. The walls are hacked out of raw stone. The lighting fixtures are made of human bones. Skulls and other bones are cemented together on the walls, making elaborate shapes. Thirteen of them. Angra sigils, I’m guessing.
There are a couple of hospital gurneys on one side of the room along with the same kind of gory surgical scene like we saw at the hospital. Only this one is old. The blood on the instruments and ground is dry and dusty. The body parts are shriveled and so far gone they don’t even smell bad.
“Still think I’m Saint Nick?” I say.
“Odds are you’re not.”
“What would be my motive?”
Wells looks around the tunnel.
“You’re insane. The pressure of the Angra threat has pushed you over the edge, so you’re acting out your murderous Hell fantasies.”
“The Shonin doesn’t think I’m Saint Nick.”
“He doesn’t know you like I do.”
“I’m a bastard. I’m not insane. There’s a difference.”
“We’ll see.”
“Sir?”
It’s Sola’s voice.
“Is everything all right?”
“Send in the forensics team. I want this place examined down to the micron. Record the scene, then bag every single piece of evidence and bring it back with us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s get out of their way,” says Wells.
“Just a minute.”
An old wooden box sits in a niche in the wall.
“I haven’t seen one of those in an Angra scene before.”
Wells follows me over.
“Don’t touch it,” he says.
“Okay.”
I don’t use my hand, but I flip the latch and push open the top of the case.
“Dammit,” says Wells.
“Watch the language.”
Inside is a skull on a deep blue velvet pillow. Its metal teeth glitter and it has lips and a nose made of hammered gold. Its eyes are like elaborate silver brooches, each set with a blue stone in the middle. Rubies flow down the top of the skull from an old head wound, each ruby smaller than the one before it, so they form a line of blood down to the eye sockets.
“Ever seen anything like it?” I say.
“No. And that’s the last playing around you get to do today. Get out of the tunnel. Grown-ups have to work.”
We crawl out of the hole and back into the subway. Wells stands and brushes dirt off his pants. The forensic team pushes past us, wrapped up in sterile white Tyvek suits. Julie Sola comes over to me.
“I guess no one’s in there.”
“No one’s used that place in a while. Those chop-shop crazies sure weren’t working in there. And they sure didn’t make that skull.”
“Whose skull?” says Sola.
“Good question.”
“I’m disturbed,” says Wells. “After the hospital, this isn’t what I was expecting.”