Inked

“What’s your deal?” I demanded. “I thought you got pulled out of one of these this morning.”

“Not this one. And I’m not going in there. You may as well shoot me now! Better that than those damn things eat me!”

“What things?”

“Kappas. This drain’s infested with ’em. Everybody knows that.”

“Kappas, huh?” I peered into the mouth of the western tu

“I don’t know where they came from. But a bunch moved in and took over the whole tu

A heavy stream of runoff gurgled under my boots, but hardly enough to satisfy a river imp. “When did these kappas move in?”

“About a week ago.”

“Huh.” This was where the Hunter had dumped the body, so he wasn’t likely to be hanging around. But the kappas were interesting. It was exactly the kind of story someone would circulate who didn’t want anyone poking around his hidey-hole. And if he’d been here once, there was a chance he’d left something behind.

The guy’s acne-covered chin took on a mulish tilt. “I’m not going in there and you can’t make me. I know my rights. You have to guarantee my safety and you can’t! There’s too many of ’em. They’re like freaking piranhas! I’m—”

“You’re not going in there.”

He stopped midrant. “I’m not?”

“Nope.” I really didn’t expect any trouble, but you never know. I dragged him back up the embankment and across the road. The tourists had gone, so I lassoed him to the Vegas sign by one ankle. “You’re going to wait for me here, safe and sound and ready to interpret anything I bring back.”

“What happens if you don’t come back?”

“Then you’ll be waiting a long time.”

I returned to the entrance of the drain and pulled out my flashlight. I shone it around, but there wasn’t much to see. A stream of runoff swallowed my ankles before disappearing into darkness. Long skeins of cobwebs fluttered overhead. Mud squelched underfoot, smelling sharply of garbage and man-made chemicals. Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.

My natural unease was strong enough that it took me a minute to notice the other, subtler urge plucking at my senses. The more I looked down that drain, the more convinced I was that I shouldn’t be here, like the very air was wrong, alien, not for me. I got the definite impression that this place didn’t like me; that it wanted me to leave. Now.

So I went in.

Patrol had noted the presence of a decaying protection ward over the west tu

The protection ward grew stronger as I moved forward, making me feel like I was battling the tide with every step. I pushed on anyway, trying to ignore the spell screaming that somewhere, just up ahead, something horrible waited. It was terribly real and absolutely convincing, like being a child staring into a dark closet and having complete certainty that evil lurked inside.

It didn’t help that, if I was in the right place, it just might.

And then my flashlight blew out.

I shook it a couple times, cursing, which only caused the bottom to come off and the batteries to fall out. Batteries I couldn’t find without a light. I bit the bullet and gave my owl tat a metaphysical nudge. I felt the power drain immediately, which wasn’t good, but when I opened my eyes the pitch black had transformed into something closer to a dark night—all outlines and shadows. I still couldn’t see clearly, but I comforted myself with the fact that neither could anybody else.

I found the batteries, but they didn’t help the piece-of-junk flashlight. I finally gave up and went on, deciding I might be better off. No need to a

But then, they hadn’t had my motivation.

The protection ward finally cut out twenty or so yards up the tu

I’d gone maybe three hundred yards when I spied flashes of dim light up ahead, spotting the wall like visible Morse code. It turned out to be coming from behind a ward, if you could call such a half-assed attempt by that name. It was spitting and crackling around the edges, lighting up a graffiti-covered junction box. It made me wonder why anyone had bothered.

Usually, going through a warded door into an unknown location makes my skin crawl. Most of them are designed so that the outside resembles the wall or whatever surface they are mimicking, but the inside is transparent. That leaves the person outside blind, while anyone inside has a clear view—and a clear shot. But in this case, the gloom of the drain ensured that all anyone saw was blackness until I stepped through, with shields up and gun drawn.

And realized that the most dangerous thing about the place was the smell. The acrid tang of wet, charred wood hit my nostrils like bad breath. The ward was concealing a cave maybe twenty by twenty-five, which looked like it had recently been doubling as a barbeque pit. The ceiling was black with soot, the remains of a bonfire scarred the floor, and smoke had almost obliterated the graffiti burning across the walls. The only artwork still visible was four savage vertical slash marks, dripping with painted blood. Colorful.

I could see, courtesy of the mass of wires that spilled out of a wall, like the i

I poked around the ash that covered everything like matte gray snow until my back ached and my hands and pant legs were coated. But all I uncovered was a rotting corduroy couch, a few pieces of singed plywood and an empty whiskey bottle. I threw the last against the wall, just to watch it shatter. The Hunter was long gone, after torching anything that might give a clue as to his identity. This was a waste of time.

I hit the corridor again in a foul mood, which wasn’t helped by the sudden appearance of a chorus of crickets. Their chirping filled the drain, echoing weirdly in the small space and sounding like a too-cheerful orchestra had moved in. The noise limited my hearing as effectively as the dark interfered with my sight. It made me progressively more paranoid as I went along; soon I was looking nervously over my shoulder every few seconds.

That was stupid since I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. I kept doing it anyway, though, and my imagination was working overtime. In that gloomy pit, every unidentified sound became the scrape of claws on cement, every watermark on the walls, a hulking monster.

Which is why I almost ran into the real monsters coming from the other direction.

There were three of them, still in human form, more or less, although the curtains of greasy, stringy hair and the baggy pants made it kind of hard to tell. But they were Weres, as their reaction on catching sight of me made clear. They didn’t change and they didn’t go for guns. But those were the only saving graces.

I flung up a shield in time to keep from being skewered by the first guy’s knife, which slid off to scrape against concrete. But the impact sent me reeling, and successive jolts jarred through my bones as the men took turns battering my less-than-substantial shield. It was weak because of the leech, because of the power drain from my owl, and because shields don’t work that great against Weres anyway. It wasn’t going to last.