Читать книгу Queene Of Light - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 12

The true foulness of the Darkworld had never seemed so raw to Malachi as it did when he left the Bio-mech’s workshop. When Keller swung open the thick, metal door and stepped down into the nearly waist-deep sewage, Malachi’s mortal throat had closed on a gag.

“Listen, I know it doesn’t seem real sanitary, but that’s the price I pay for such roomy digs. Get your ass down here before something comes along and swallows me whole.” Keller reached his hand up, and Malachi had little to do but accept it.

“Is that a danger?” The water was slightly less than cold as he eased into it. Cold would have been somehow better, cleaner. Something brushed Malachi’s leg, and he repressed a shudder.

Keller studied him with interest, his grizzled face working toward a smile. “With you around? Never. You’re my insurance policy. Not a lot of Darklings are gonna mess with a guy who’s traveling next to the Angel of Death.”

“I am not the Angel of Death. I am merely—was merely—his servant.” The man had begun to slog ahead of him, and Malachi struggled to keep up. It was a difficult thing to walk through water. His muscles ached after only a few steps. “I am pleased to provide you protection. You have been kind to me. I know Humans enjoy hearing that their actions are approved of.”

“Yeah, we’re real suckers for heartfelt expressions of gratitude.” They had come to a fork in the tunnels. Keller flipped the light on his strange hat off and held a finger to his lips. “Okay, we’ve gotta go quiet through this part. I think we’ll have less trouble down that way.” He gestured to where the tunnel branched to the left. Water lay deep, and there seemed no end to it.

The other tunnel sloped upward quickly. Malachi could make out dry ground only a few feet from them. “Why not that way? You wear a contraption to keep you dry. I have nothing. I would prefer to take the drier path.”

“For one, this is not a contraption. These are waders. They just look strange because I won them off a Rock Troll who wasn’t all that good at cards. Two, that way looks easier, but trust me, it’s not.” Keller scratched the plate behind his ear with his metal fingers, the sparks fizzing out before they reached the water. “Easier in the Darkworld means more dangerous. There’ll be a tax, for one thing.”

“A tax?” Malachi had traversed these tunnels usually invisible to the denizens of the Darkworld. He had never been charged a tax. Then, the creatures he had been visible to may not have been brave enough to charge him.

“Yeah, a tax. For going the easy route. Hell, even some of the not-so-easy routes are taxed. If it’s a mortal, they usually want money or smokes. If it’s a Bio-mech, like me, they want scrap metal or spare body parts.” Keller held up his mechanical arm. “But God help you if you meet up with an Elf or a Succubus. What they want…” He punctuated his sentence with a shudder.

“Elf?” Malachi had not paid much attention to the species of the Darkworld he’d not had to collect. “I have never heard of Elf.”

“Elves. Outcast Fae. They were dark-sided long before they wound up down here. Nasty blue skin and yellow eyes.” Keller made a face. “They don’t like anyone. Barely get along with each other.”

“This world is…” Malachi struggled for the word in the Human language. The gift of tongues continued to slowly wear away. “Strange.”

“Strange to you? Imagine if you lived up there, where I’m from originally.” Keller gestured to the ceiling of the tunnel. “And it’s not like you haven’t been here for a while.”

“Too long.” When had time become an issue to him? They slogged on, the water growing deeper, almost to the top of the Bio-mech’s wading contraption. The tunnel around them changed shape, growing wider, and they followed it until Malachi saw a high ledge of dry ground beside their heads. “What is this place?”

“A subway?” Keller shrugged and leaned against the wall, reaching into his waders for the cigarettes he seemed to rely on more than food or drink. “I guess trains used to run under here before they cluttered up the Aboveground. That was before I was born. Are you doing a history on the Humans or what?”

“You are Human,” Malachi snapped back. “And I am merely trying to acclimate myself to this existence.”

“Correction, pal. I was Human. Now I can’t show my face up there.” The blue smoke from the Bio-mech’s cigarette spiraled through a dim shaft of light from an overhead vent, and Keller’s gaze followed it. “I could wear a hat. Gloves. Fuck them, they’d still get me.” He chuckled, a bitter sound. “Did you ever have to go up there?”

“No.” Only now it occurred to Malachi to question that. “I suppose we should have.”

“Uh, yeah. There are quite a few more mortals up there than down here.” He took another long draw off his cigarette. “Did any of you go up there?”

“No.” Another “why” he would not have worried about before.

“Don’t you think that’s kind of…” Keller gestured with his metal hand. “Unfair?”

Malachi shook his head, and the movement felt strangely natural. “I do not decide what is fair or unfair. I merely carried out the will of God.”

“And His will is to abandon those poor bastards up there?” The Bio-mech took another long draw off his cigarette. “Good thing I came down here, then.”

“That is not what I meant. You have twisted my words.” Malachi’s hands fisted at his sides, hands that would never have thought of committing senseless violence before. But this mortal and his confusing questions sent sparks of doubt through his brain. His immortality may have been ripped from him, but he would not allow this perversion of God’s work to take his last certainty from him.

“It’s a logical argument, though, right? I mean, if you guys aren’t up there doing what you do, who is? Does God have some other Angels making the rounds?”

“No. Only Death Angels collect souls.” So, why did no Death Angel go above, where the bulk of the mortals in existence lived? What happened to those souls?

Keller looked pleased with himself. Pleased at having infuriated him? “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Malachi slogged away, his confusion and rage giving fuel to his sore legs.

“Hey, you can’t do that,” Keller called after him.

Malachi did not look back. “Yes, I can.”

“No, you can’t. See, if you go that way—”

“I will become lost without you? I will fall prey to some creature lurking in the depths?” He struggled through the water, which inhibited his movements like a length of rope around his thighs.

“Kind of,” Keller called, but his voice held a troubling lack of concern. “But by all means, prove me wrong.”

Malachi took two more steps, though tentatively. Humans had a way of speaking words that were entirely different from the meaning they wished to convey. Another few steps, and his confidence returned. Nothing loomed in the shadows ahead, nothing brushed past his legs below the surface. It was not so treacherous as the Human warned.

And then the ground slipped from under his feet, and Malachi’s world reduced to water. His eyes shut under their own power, stranding him in darkness. The filth clogged his nose, rushed into his ears. He could not breathe, nor could he hear above the rhythm of his flailing limbs as they cut though the water. Forcing open his eyes he spied silver-green orbs rising to the surface that seemed impossibly far above him. The air from his lungs, stolen by the water and carried away.

I will die here. The panic clawed in his chest. His lungs cried out for breath, watery or not, to ease the burning ache in them. He opened his mouth, choking in surprise when something clutched at the uncomfortable collar of his shirt, then at his neck, catching hair and some feathers bent from the currents. His head broke the surface and he gagged, coughing a geyser of filthy water from his lungs.

“Easy, easy,” Keller repeated, grasping him under an arm with his metal one. The Human used his organic limb to pull them through the water, until Malachi got his footing and leaned against him for support. “I told you not to go that way.”

“Yes, you are very wise.” Why did he feel foolish? It was not as though the Human had given him explicit reasons why he should not have gone that way. If he had said, “Please, do not go that way or you will slip beneath the water and drown,” certainly that would have been a more effective warning. He opened his mouth to tell him so when the Bio-mech pointed to steps rising from the water at the level of their heads.

“We’re going up those,” Keller said, holding his arms out from his sides as he sloshed through the water. “They go all the way up to the top, so good news, you won’t have to fly me up there.”

“I could not fly now. Not with wet wings,” Malachi admitted grudgingly. “If I can fly at all.”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t. I did a bang-up job on those puppies,” the Human puffed as he gained dry ground. “Oh, damn it. Now look, I had to swim after you and now my smokes are all wet.”

“Your legs will be wet, as well,” Malachi pointed out, trying to be helpful. It appeared the Human wasn’t interested in his brand of help, from the way he swore and kicked the waterproof contraption aside.

The area they’d ascended to was drier, though their feet and clothing left splashes that soaked into the concrete. The walls of this tunnel were decorated in stark tiles that might have been white beneath the forests of mildew growing on them. From beneath a dying mold colony, a warped paper image of a Human woman holding a piece of Human technology to her ear with a wide grin declared “per minute,” the rest of the words swallowed by the layer of filth. Another set of stairs led up.

“Does that go to the surface?” How deep could the Humans have dug? Malachi had forgotten how long it had been since the rift spilled his kind onto Earth. Time had been circular to him as an immortal, an infinite loop. It must have been hundreds of years now.

“No, but we do get a little closer,” Keller called, disappearing behind a column with his wading device folded over one arm. “In fact, we cross that bridge up there, take a turn and we’re in a tunnel with surface vents.”

“What are you doing? I thought I required the services of a healer.” A drop of cold water dripped from one of the slimy stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and Malachi dodged it. “This place is foul and smells of decay.”

“Then you should be right at home,” Keller said with a small laugh. “I’m looking for a place to hide my waders. I don’t want someone swiping them, but they’re too heavy to carry.”

“Hurry up, then.” He wandered around some of the large, square columns with their crowns of mold, but he went cautiously, still shaken by his near drowning. “Tell me more of where we will go.”

Keller gave a sigh with much suffering melded into it. “The Strip is a neutral zone between the Lightworld and the Darkworld. Stop me if I’m going too fast for you. It’s a place where people from either side can go to do whatever seedy business they’ve got there, and a lot of unaligned types hole up there if they’ve been banished and don’t have ties to either world. Lots of Gypsies and Bio-mechs stay there.”

“Why not you?”

Keller heaved another sigh, this time too dramatic to believe. Why anyone would wish to make themselves appear so miserable, Malachi did not know. “Because I take a side. I don’t like living down here. So I’ve got two choices. Do what I’m supposed to do as a loyal Human and stay the fuck out of it—which involves paying the god-awful high rent to live on the Strip—or pick a side keen on ending this whole mess. The Darkworld doesn’t want to destroy the Human race—”

“And the Lightworld does.” Malachi knew this well enough, from overhearing countless Darkworld assassination plots.

“And the rent is cheaper,” Keller said. Whatever this rent was, mortals placed much importance on it. Then, the Bio-mech grinned and said, “Well, more like free.”

“So, this Strip, I will not be harmed there?” Malachi asked, watching as Keller knelt and positioned the waders behind a loose tile.

He laughed and stood, wiping his hands against each other as though he could clean the dirt and mold from them. “I never said you wouldn’t be harmed. But you won’t be persecuted for being a Darkworlder, either.”

There was nothing but death and violence in the Underground. This Malachi knew well enough. But when he had been immortal and invisible to nearly all creatures, he had not given danger much thought. He did not think he even knew what a dangerous creature would look like. He had been concerned only with the mortals, and no matter their species they had never been a threat to him.

Was this how it would always be then? To fear that every step would bring him closer to his death? To lurk about in the dark as Keller did, mumbling and consuming the addictive smoke in an effort to simply keep from becoming insane?

“Hey, you coming?” Keller’s voice echoed through the space, and Malachi startled. He had not been paying attention, and the Bio-mech had moved ahead without him.

He followed, unwilling to be left alone in the Darkworld, which now seemed much more intimidating than it ever had before.