Pay Dirt Page 28

  “Of course.” She hesitated. “That coin means something to me. If there’s something in that tomb that I should know about, I have to find it. I’m coming with you.”

  She started for the door, then paused. She gestured to my coat. “How often do you get that thing cleaned? Because I’m pretty sure I just saw a rat peeking out of your pocket.”

  I grinned. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  29

  I stuck doggedly to the speed limit. The last thing I needed was to have to explain myself to a cop who hadn’t yet had his morning coffee and donut.

  “Is there a problem, officer? There’s no reason to be concerned. Me and my friend here, the one with the staples in her face, were just taking our pet rat out for a morning drive. This car? Oh no, it’s not mine. I stole it after a terrible unreported accident totaled our last vehicle. Don’t worry about all the blood in the back, either. We just had to transport some dead bodies. You know how it is.”

  We made for an oddball gang. I was in the driver’s seat of the stolen hatchback, gripping the steering wheel with a hand burned by York’s magic. I had a sword tucked down beside my leg and I was wearing my coat stuffed with everything I could get my hands on in our brief trip home. Lilian sat beside me, splitting her attention between the GPS app on her phone and Daud’s copy of Habi’s map. And on the dashboard stood Isidora’s rat, its nose pointed toward the road ahead of us, its tail flicking back and forth with impatience.

  In Lilian’s lap were two pistols she’d looted from the cultists who’d attacked us. We’d found a spare magazine on the female cultist, which meant we actually had a fair amount of firepower when combined with my revolver. I wondered how well York would respond to a silver bullet to the brain.

  Aside from Lilian’s directions, we didn’t really speak. We passed a gas station sandwich back and forth between us, taking bites as we drove. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but we both needed to refuel. It didn’t help that I could hear Lilian’s busted jaw clicking and crunching with every bite she took.

  The map led us out of town, through thick woods and across bubbling streams. We wound our way up through wild hills. The woods here weren’t claimed by anyone anymore—we were far from goblin territory, and not even the few remaining logging companies wanted a piece of this land. Of course, that didn’t mean it was uninhabited. Places like this were where the wild Strangers lurked—the spriggans and the trolls and all those that shunned civilization. With luck, we wouldn’t be noticed.

  The roads grew rough. A little further on they became unpaved and started to peter out completely. We got as close as we could by car, then pulled over beneath the sheltering embrace of an overhanging tree. We gathered our stuff together. I stuck Isidora’s rat back into my pocket and we set off on foot.

  Birds rustled through the treetops above us, crying out warning calls as we pushed through the woods. I glanced up at the leafy canopy, scanning for threats. Even this far from town I didn’t expect to run into any predatory monsters out here in broad daylight, but you could never be too careful.

  “You still got that charm necklace I gave you at the museum?” I asked Lilian, keeping my voice low.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the loop of twine tied with small glass bottles.

  “Put it on,” I said. “Let’s not make it too easy for the bad guys.”

  She slipped the necklace over her head, and my eyes started to slide off her. Satisfied that it was still working, I buttoned up the collar of my coat, completing the circle and activating the same charms of hiding I’d sewn into the lining. We were far from invisible, but in the thick press of the woods it might just allow us to spot our enemies before they saw us.

  The GPS on Lilian’s phone was starting to get a little spotty. So was our cell phone reception. Whether that was due to the terrain or a more unnatural factor, I didn’t know. Lilian started making noises of frustration.

  I glanced back at her. I was leading the way, my revolver at my side. Standard ammunition—I’d save the silver bullets until I had a use for them.

  “How are we going, Slim?”

  “There’s supposed to be a trail here. You see any trails?”

  I kicked at the thick undergrowth. “Could’ve been one here once, I guess.”

  She banged her phone a couple of times against a tree trunk, sending a couple of beetles scuttling away in terror.

  “I don’t think breaking your phone is going to help us,” I said.

  “Might make me feel better.”

  I was pretty sure the frustration in her voice was a result of more than just a screwy phone. I could understand it. I wasn’t in the best of moods myself.

  “I think we’re off course,” she said with a growl. “Damn it. We’re going to have to head down to the west until we get to the stream. Then we can figure out where the hell we are.”

  I looked up at the shape of the sun through the trees. More wasted time. Time we couldn’t afford.

  As I opened my mouth to speak, I felt a squirming in my coat pocket. With a squeak, the rat leaped down to the forest floor, sniffed at the air, and scurried off into the underbrush.

  “Hey!” I called after it. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  I got a distant squeak in response. Lilian and I glanced at each other.

  “You really trust that witch?” she asked.

  “I’ll let you know if we survive this. Come on.”

  I took off after the rat. After a moment’s grumbling, Lilian followed.

  The rat navigated the thick underbrush with ease. Lilian and I weren’t so nimble. We grunted and stomped our way through the woods, our only guide the squeaking of the rat and the occasional flash of its tail. The forest seemed to be getting thicker with each passing second. If we kept this up much longer, we’d never find our way out again.

  And then, suddenly, the woods parted. We burst out into a clearing thick with waist-high grass. Thorn bushes clung to the hillside off to our right, and in front of us, rising like a zombie out of the mists, stood the most decrepit shack I’d ever seen. Somehow the thing was still standing, despite the fact that two of its walls were missing entirely and the wood looked so rotten I wasn’t sure even witch’s fire would set the thing ablaze.

  I spotted the rat snuffling about in the long grass. It looked back at me and squeaked with what I could only assume was smug satisfaction.

  “Don’t go getting too cocky,” I said to it. “You’re still a rat.”

  Lilian stared down at the map as she stepped into the clearing. “I think this is it. Look, that has to be the shack, right? It’s marked right here. So somewhere around here there should be—”

  “Lilian!” I grabbed her by the arm and tugged her back. She stumbled and fell back on her ass, with me beside her. It was only then that she looked up from the map and saw what she’d nearly stepped into.

  She swallowed and finished her sentence. “—a mine shaft.”

  Together, we peered over the edge of the shaft entrance and down into the dark. The entrance was surrounded by a few planks of rotten wood, but it hadn’t been sealed closed. The long grass did a good job of concealing the entrance until we were nearly on top of it. The shaft itself was about eight feet wide and descended vertically down for at least another ten feet. Beyond that, the sunlight didn’t reach.

  Frankly, it was an accident waiting to happen.

  “Hell,” I said, “you’d think they’d put a fence up. Or a sign, or something.”

  “I’ll write a strongly worded letter when we get home.” She took a deep breath, then grabbed a small rock and dropped it down the shaft. She started counting. “One, one thousand…two, one thousand…”

  I heard the distant clatter of the rock finding the bottom of the shaft.

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think jumping down is a great idea.”

  “Agreed.”

  The shaft had a timber framework, but it was i
n poor condition. Hell, it looked like it hadn’t been particularly well built in the first place. My guess was this had been part of some small private mining operation. Every man and his dog had once gone digging in the hills around Lost Falls, hoping to strike it rich. I wasn’t sure if this was just a ventilation shaft or whether it had once had some sort of elevator system rigged up. Either way, we were going down it.

  According to Habi’s map, this shaft connected up to a wider network of tunnels running beneath us. My guess was that he hadn’t gone in this way, but this was how he’d come out. I circled around the entrance, then pointed.

  “There. Looks like someone built a ladder into the side.”

  She followed my gaze. “No offense, Ozzy, but I don’t think it’ll hold your weight.”

  She wasn’t wrong. The “ladder” wasn’t much more than a few pieces of rotten timber fixed to the side of the shaft. I eyed it for a second, then shrugged and reached into my overladen bag. I pulled out the coil of rope I’d found in Early’s tool shed.

  “How good are you with knots?” I asked.

  “You know what I’ve been wondering?” Lilian called down to me.

  My aching hands clutched the handholds offered by the makeshift ladder as I descended into the dark. The flashlight tied to my belt swung wildly as I moved, its beam struggling to pierce the black. Already the air felt thick and old, though I was only halfway down the shaft.

  “What?” I snapped back through gritted teeth. I felt with my foot for the next rung of the ladder. The wood groaned and broke away beneath my weight. With a spike of fear, my grip tightened on my handholds. Between that and the rope tied around me, I managed not to fall. We’d fashioned a kind of bucket seat from the rope, looping it around my legs and waist and groin. It was about as uncomfortable as it sounds.

  “They call this kind of thing spelunking, right?” Lilian said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You think they call it that because that’s the sound you make if you fall and hit the bottom? Spelunk!”

  “Lilian?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut the fuck up, huh?”

  “You got it, boss.”

  I shuffled my foot around until I found another rung. This one seemed a little more solid. I gradually lowered my weight onto it. I breathed a sigh of relief when it held.

  I continued to descend, inch by inch. Lilian slowly let out the rope as I made my way down. I could only hope that the rope wasn’t getting too frayed by the tree we’d looped it around. Hell, I wasn’t even sure the rope was rated to hold my weight.

  As I descended, I passed a couple of other passages leading off the shaft. They were small, though, only large enough to crawl through. They were no doubt designed to carry air to other parts of the mine. I continued down.

  My arms were aching by the time I felt solid rock beneath my feet. I stepped off the ladder, shook some feeling back into my hands, then took hold of my flashlight and shone it about. I was in a cramped shaft that sloped down into the earth. A few rotten timbers were all that held it up. Around my feet I could see the rusted and decayed remains of some sort of mine equipment.

  “How’s it look?” Lilian’s voice echoed down the shaft.

  “Dark,” I said.

  I climbed out of my harness while Lilian tied off the rope and started to descend. She, at least, was light enough that the rungs of the makeshift ladder didn’t break under her weight.

  As she made her way down, I crouched down and peered at the rocky ground near the base of the shaft. Isidora’s rat poked its head out of my pocket, wrinkled its nose, and jumped out. It scrambled along the ground until it came to the thing I was shining the flashlight at—the skeleton of a small bird. The rat sniffed at the skeleton, then looked back at me.

  “Probably just a snack for some Stranger who was using the mine for shelter,” I said. “Looks like it’s been there a while.” I shone the light about. “No fresh tracks or spoor. Probably long gone.”

  The rat gave a low squeak.

  “Don’t be so pessimistic,” I said. “We’ve got worse things to worry about than bird-eating cave-dwellers.”

  I examined the ground further, but I could find no other signs that anyone had recently passed this way. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it meant we were in the wrong spot. It was possible—our copy of Habi’s map wasn’t exactly bristling with detail. Maybe York and his cultists hadn’t arrived yet, or maybe they’d used a different entrance to get into the mine. Of course, Morley’s wraith could have come this way. It would leave no trace on bare rock.

  Lilian slid the last few feet down the rope. I’m pretty sure she did it entirely because she thought it would look cool. She was right. After making sure I’d seen, she took out her own flashlight and switched it on.

  “Smells down here, doesn’t it?”

  “I just hope we’re not breathing in any toxic fumes. Maybe you can survive that, but I can’t.”

  “We could use the rat as our canary,” she suggested.

  The rat squealed and bared its teeth at us. Lilian just grinned back and waggled her fingers.

  “Cut it out, you two,” I said. “Lilian, which way are we going?”

  She consulted the map, then nodded toward the downward sloping passage. “That way.”

  “All right.” I adjusted my bag on my shoulder and pointed my flashlight beam down the passage. “We stay quiet and move carefully. Let’s try not to fall into any elevator shafts.”

  “And if we run into trouble?” Lilian asked.

  “You still got those guns?”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out one of the pistols she’d looted from the dead cultists.

  “There’s your answer, then,” I said.

  “A couple of pop guns aren’t going to do much against a wraith,” she pointed out.

  I shook my head and clutched the grip of the sword hanging from my belt. “So let’s stay very, very quiet.”

  30

  We crept through the dark in silence, moving ever deeper through the thick, foul-smelling air.

  I was no stranger to the underground. In my time pursuing my little brother’s abductors, I’d traversed endless tunnels and caverns. But I wasn’t in the goblins’ mines anymore. There, in the city beneath the mountain, there was never silence.

  Here, though, was no rumble of a thousand voices echoing down endless tunnels. There were no wide open caverns and mine shafts converted into thoroughfares. There were only cramped, poorly dug out tunnels, collapsed passageways, and the rusted remnants of a failed mining venture.

  And the silence. Hell, the silence. My own breathing seemed too loud in my ears. Every step I took sounded like a thunderclap.

  Isidora’s rat scurried ahead of us, staying at the edge of my flashlight beam. In the dark, the rat’s senses were better than either mine or Lilian’s. It acted as a scout, alerting us to any pitfalls or loose stones. Twice I would’ve disappeared down some poorly marked hole in the ground if not for the rat’s squeaking.

  While the rat watched for holes and Lilian navigated using Habi’s map, I kept an eye the ceiling. Even our footsteps sometimes dislodged dust and small stones from the top of the shafts where the bracing was no longer intact. Each time I’d call for a halt, and we would wait with bated breath to see if the whole place would collapse around us. By some miracle, nothing had fallen on us yet.

  Around every corner and in every alcove I expected to find Morley’s wraith waiting for us, shimmering blade in hand. But there was always just more darkness. More silence.

  As we descended, the shafts we passed through became even more cramped. Dozens of small tunnels branched off from each other, turning the mine into a maze. Whoever had run this place must’ve been desperately trying to luck into a vein of precious metals that would see him rolling in dough.

  “I think we’ve been down this shaft before,” I whispered to Lilian as I peered around us. “Are you sure you’re readi
ng that map right?”

  “Stop calling it a map.” She shook the piece of paper. “This is a doodle on a napkin. I mean, look at this bit. Can you tell what that says? What’s it even pointing to?”

  “So what you’re telling me is we’re lost. Again.”

  “We’re not lost,” she insisted. “I’m pretty sure we’re on the right track.”

  She paused, looked down at the map again, then pointed the light down a narrow side passageway. About twenty feet down along, the tunnel had partially collapsed. A pile of rubble reached nearly to the shattered ceiling, with only a small opening near the top.

  “I think we’re supposed to go that way,” she said.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I kid you not.”

  I shone my light at the small opening in the pile of rubble. The whole thing looked unsteady enough that I worried it might collapse again if we spoke too loud. My light failed to illuminate whatever was on the other side.

  “You’re a stick figure,” I said to Lilian. “Maybe you can get through there. Me, I’m not so sure about.”

  “Don’t be a coward.”

  “If you’re so confident, you go first,” I said.

  “Hey, this is your quest we’re on.”

  “I did the ladder first. Now it’s your turn.”

  As we argued, the rat darted away from us impatiently. It scrambled up the pile of rubble and disappeared through the small opening. A few seconds later it reappeared, squeaked at us, and then slipped back into the opening once more.

  “All right. Fine.” I turned to Lilian and held out my fist. “Rock-paper-scissors?”

  She threw scissors. I threw rock. I grinned and gestured to the rubble. “After you.”

  She shot me a glare, then made her way to the collapsed section. I followed behind her. After a few seconds studying the rubble pile, she carefully began to pull herself up to the opening. A couple of the smaller pieces of rock shifted under her weight, but the bulk of the pile remained in place. She shone her flashlight through the opening, then put the flashlight in her mouth and began to crawl into the space. Her legs shimmied out of sight.