Underground

“Q-man,” he mumbled, as if he’d struggled to put the name and face together.

A cloud of sickly olive green shattered by bolts of orange swirled around him in the Grey, and he seemed to have a pair of dark shadows where Quinton had none. I wondered for an instant about Ben and Fish, behind me, but I didn’t turn to look. Lass straightened up a little, his fear easing a touch at seeing a familiar face. “Man… I—what you want?”

“Where’s Tanker?” Quinton asked.

“I don’t know, man! I was—I don’t know. That dog. That dog, man, it was trying to kill me! All dogs try to kill me. They hate me! They follow me around!”

Quinton eased closer to Lass, the long sweep of his coat meeting the creeping fog and concealing his movement. “The dog’s gone. She won’t be bothering you for a while. I don’t think you’ll need the stu

“No! The other one’s still out there!” he shouted, stumbling a step backward in fright. “The big… the big thing, the snake-dog! It’s go

Quinton shifted to the right, herding Lass into a blank wall. “That why you sent me and Harper to its nest? So it would eat someone else instead?”

“I didn’t mean to! But, but… I know… its hungry all the time,” Lass whined, pinging between terror and self-justification. “Gotta keep it fed. And I thought… I thought you knew about the others. Its not my fault! I didn’t make it eat ‘em!”

“I know you didn’t, Lass. It’s been a good hunting dog—it ate your enemies for you. Why would the dog eat its master?”

“I’m not its master! I don’t want it! I didn’t know what it was. It ate Tandy! And then it started following me around!”

Lass had run out of room and bumped up against the wall. He jerked to look at what he’d bumped into and Quinton closed the gap between them, snatching the stun stick from his hand and locking his other arm around the quivering junkie’s shoulders, pulling him in tight against his side. “It’s OK, Lass. I won’t let it eat you,” he said, crouching down and bringing the other man down with him.

“We’re much too small for it to see.”

Quinton waved the rest of us closer, to make a fence between Lass and any immediate ideas of escape. We gathered around in an arc with the dark wall of the fishery building at Lass’s back and the spawning pool at ours.

“These guys will keep the monster away while we talk. Now, how did you end up with the snake-dog?”

Lass shook and huddled under the edge of Quinton’s coat, like a child. “The fat old squaw woman—you know, the one in the park who laughs at everyone. She was stuck in the pit, so we went to help her out. Tandy was pretty drunk. He fell in. I got the old lady out and I was going to get Tandy when this big thing came out of the hole and ate him! It bit him in half! I got the hell out of there. I figured the old lady could run away her own self.”

“Did the old lady give you anything?”

“Yeah, she was all happy I’d helped her and she said she was going to give me something, but all she gave me was a piece of string. I had it in my pocket for a while, but I threw it away.”

“Why?”

“I figured it out,” Lass said, squinting as he tapped the side of his head and tried to look clever. “It was the string that tied the snake-dog to me. I wanted to get rid of it, so I threw the string away. Smart, huh?”

“Where did you throw it away?”

“I’m not go

“I think the old lady probably wants it back, don’t you?”

I wished Quinton would hurry—the cold fog was crawling into my clothes and making me shiver. I also didn’t much care for Lass and found myself impatient to be done with the creep.

“It’s a bad thing!” he insisted. “It’s the only thing I had—I ain’t got nothing in the world but my clothes, not even family, not even friends—but I didn’t want that piece of string. It’s bad!”

“I agree. But you don’t want it lying around where someone will find it,” said Quinton. “If you tell me where you dropped it, I’ll take it back to the old woman. OK?”

“You would?”

“Yup.”

“In the bricks… After Je

Quinton nodded and began to say, “I understand—”

The spawning pool erupted behind us and we all spun to stare as Sisiutl leapt into the air with a rush of water and a shriek like metal tearing apart.

Twisting and flickering through a dozen appearances, it screeched its polyglot language and dove through the air toward us.

Fish shouted in Lushootseed as Lass screamed and jerked out of Quinton’s grip, dashing for a hole between the fog-bound buildings. Confused, Sisiutl whipped toward Fish and roared a string of angry Lushootseed. Fish, bug-eyed with terror, stumbled and fell backward, babbling uselessly.

The face in the center looked disgusted and the serpent heads at each end snapped at the air in fury as the creature whipped around to go after Lass.

Ben waved his arms in the air, shouting out words in as many languages as he could, until the zeqwa turned its attention to him, snapping its various jaws near his head. Ben flinched but didn’t run, continuing to shout and seeming to demand a response.

At last Sisiutl roared a reply and ceased thrashing the air so violently to concentrate on the man between its two hissing heads. As man and monster spoke in a rattle of Latin and several other languages I could almost catch, Fish crawled to me in a daze. He looked sick and shocked.

“Are you going to be all right?” I whispered.

“Yeah… I just… I guess I wasn’t ready for… this,” Fish said.

“No one is. I wish I knew what they were saying…”

“Sisiutl says he wants to eat us. Ben is saying we’re not to be toyed with…

Umm… something about powers and the favor of gods I’m not really getting…”

I stared at Fish. “How do you know that?”

“I can hear him. It’s weird. I know he must be talking to Ben in whatever freaky mix of languages they’re using, but I get Lushootseed in my ears. Some of the words are muffled though. Probably concepts my language doesn’t have.”

Sisiutl rolled like an impatient whale and shrieked.

“He’s losing his temper. He’s hungry. He says the man with the dog wasn’t enough food. He says we’re enemies of the man he helps, so he should eat us.”

Ben frowned and shook his head, making a flinging gesture with his arms as he replied in fast syllables. Then he yelled in English, “I’m telling him he’s free, so he doesn’t have to eat us—we’re not his master’s enemies. He has no master now but Qamaits.”

Sisiutl reared up into a U, the snake heads snapping at us and the main face screaming.

“Uh-oh… he’s going to eat the other guy—Lass. The one who ran off,” Fish exclaimed, scrambling to his feet. “Sistu says he will take him to the sacred ground. Oh, shit…”

Sisiutl sprang into the air and dove into the fog-shrouded water, leaving a knife cut in the rising mist.

“Sacred ground? What? Where?” I demanded.

“There’s a marsh on the other side of the bridge. You know?” Fish burbled, starting to run in the direction Lass has gone. “Foster Island—it used to be sacred to the Duwamish people—they used it as a burial ground! That’s where he’ll go! He’ll herd the man there to kill him! We can’t let him do it!”

“It’s heading for the arboretum!” Ben exclaimed, starting after Fish.

“We can’t catch them on foot,” I said, grabbing Ben as Quinton went after Fish.

“We’ll take the Rover and catch up, but we’ll have to be faster than Sistu—Lass has a lead but the monster won’t kill him in plain sight if the marsh is close,” I thought aloud. “He’ll carry him there in one of his webs.”

“You can’t let him be killed,” Fish said. “He has to answer for his crimes. I–I have to believe those legends. I’ve seen them now! He has to make it good—that’s what the legends say!”