A second scream tore the air.
“Maybe it’s not her,” growled Grey as they snatched up their weapons and each took a lantern.
“Dear God let it not be so,” said the Sioux as he broke into a run.
Grey was right on his heels.
The path between the stacks of precious metals was narrow and long.
The scream faded to a harsh silence as they ran and thereafter all Grey could hear was the slap of shoe leather and the pants and grunts of their breathing. The rows of precious metals gave out and the walls were bare. The light from their lanterns rolled before them and it seemed as if the long dark of that place was endless. Then they saw the rear wall. It was set with a single iron door and, as before, the door stood partly open. At first Grey saw what he thought was some thick, pale snake lying across the open threshold, but as they drew near he saw that it was an arm.
A man’s arm.
They slowed to a careful walk.
The arm reached out from the other room, fingers splayed, muscles slack.
They moved cautiously now, angling to let their light spill inside while staying outside of the line of any ambush gunplay. As they shifted, Grey saw that the arm was thick and flabby, without apparent muscle and the hand bore no trace of the calluses of manual labor. There was a large emerald ring in a gold setting on the index finger.
“Is that Chesterfield?” he asked quietly.
“No. That was his foreman. I recognize the ring.”
In the lantern light the arm gleamed like a fat slug.
Grey pushed the door open the rest of the way, looking for the owner of that limb. However the arm was all there was. The other end was a ragged stump that lay in a small puddle of blood. It was immediately clear that no blade that had cut the arm from its owner. The wound was savage, raw.
“Something tore it off,” said Looks Away.
“Something like what?”
The Sioux had no answer.
They stepped inside, guns up and out, ready to fight, to kill.
The room beyond was another of the circular chambers and there was a second set of spiral stone steps. There, sitting on the third step down, was a woman.
Middle-aged, lovely in a faded way, with masses of dark hair pinned up in a bun, and a sheer dressing gown that offered very little concealment to her ample curves. However the gossamer was stained with blood and soot, and that handsome face was white with shock and blood loss.
She sat in a pool of blood.
It ran over the edge of the step and down to the next and the next. She held a broken silver letter opener in one hand, the blade stained with gore. Her other hand was clamped against a dreadful slash that had opened her from breastbone to hip. Bubbles of red expanded from between her lips, swelled and burst, misting her face with tiny dots of crimson.
“Dear god,” said Looks Away as he rushed over. “Veronica!”
The woman’s eyelids were closed but opened at the sound of her name. Her eyes were a dark green, but they were unfocused and glassy with shock and pain.
Looks Away set his lantern down and laid the shotgun on the top step. Then he knelt and very gently brushed a few wisps of dark hair from her brow.
“Oh, Veronica,” he murmured, “what have you gotten yourself into?”
His voice was soft, his tone familiar, his touch intimate. It made Grey sad because the wound the woman was trying to stanch was horrific. Muscle and bone were torn, and through the gaping slash he could see the bulge of a purple coil of intestine.
“Thomas … oh, my sweet Thomas. My sweet man…”
“My dear,” said the Sioux, “who did this to you?”
She mouthed some words and they both bent to hear. “The chickens got out.”
“The what? What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it … strange? I thought they were … chickens.”
She coughed and fresh blood leaked from the corners of her mouth.
“Grey—?” asked Looks Away, his fingers pressing over hers to try and seal what could not be mended. “Grey, we need to do something.”
Grey did not move. There was nothing either of them could do.
Veronica Chesterfield raised her eyes and looked into Looks Away’s face. “I’m sorry, Thomas…,” she said.
“No, no, no,” he said quickly and softly. “No, it’ll be fine, lass. We’ll sort this out and—.”
“Mrs. Chesterfield,” said Grey, “who did this? What happened?”
“Damn it, Grey, not now,” snapped Looks Away, but Veronica smiled at him. There was blood on her lips, but she managed a faint smile.
“I … came down here to hide,” she said in a faint voice. “Isn’t that funny? Me thinking that it was safe down here?”
“What do you mean? Who did this?”
“Aleksander was very upset with Nolan. So … upset.” Her eyes sharpened for a moment.
“He came for us, Looks. He sent them for us. From the sky … from the shadows. From everywhere.”
“Why?” begged Looks Away.
“It was because of Nolan,” she said in a faint voice. “Nolan has been naughty. He thought Aleksander would not know … but the devil always knows.”
“What happened, Mrs. Chesterfield?” asked Grey. “Help us understand exactly what happened here.”
“Don’t you know?” Her green eyes shifted toward him. “They opened the doorway to Hell and all the chickens got out…”
The words chilled Grey to the marrow.
Veronica coughed and the wound tried to gape wider. Looks Away uttered a small cry and clamped both hands over it. Tears boiled into the corners of his eyes.
“Grey,” he begged, “please…”
Grey came and sat down on the step next to his friend. He placed one hand on the Sioux’s shoulder and the other over the hands trying to hold back the inevitable. It was all he could do in an impossible situation.
“He…,” began Veronica and her voice was noticeably weaker, “Nolan made a deal with the Devil. He did. Everyone thought … they were enemies … that they were at war … with each other. Then he broke his deal … broke his word … and the Devil came for him. With a ship that sails through the sky … with soldiers and their clockwork guns … with other things…”
She shuddered and coughed and blood bubbled from between her lips.
Grey plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Looks Away, who dabbed at the blood on Veronica’s mouth.
Even then, even dying, she favored him with a smile and a courteous little nod. It was so genteel a thing that it touched Grey’s heart. He suddenly found that he liked this woman.
“When you say he made a deal with the Devil, ma’am,” he said, “do you mean with Aleksander Deray?”
“Yes,” she said. “With him. With … the Devil.”
“What was the deal?” asked Looks Away.
“They … wanted … it all…”
“All of what?” asked Grey. “The mineral rights? The water? The ghost rock?”
“No,” she said weakly. She was fading and it was a terrible thing to witness. It was almost like the soul of the woman stood behind a faded portrait of what she had looked like in life, and with each moment the soul took another step backward. Withdrawing life from the image. Going away.
The tears burned their way down Looks Away’s face.
“No,” repeated Veronica, “my husband and … that monster … they wanted it all.”
“All of what, sweetheart,” said Looks Away, and his voice cracked as he spoke.
“All…,” she said. “It’s all … down there, Thomas. Down … there … When they came for Nolan, I ran down here to hide.”
“Where’s Nolan,” asked Looks Away. “Where’s your husband? Did they kill him, too? Did they turn him into one of those things?”
It seemed to cost Veronica a lot to answer. “The Devil … took … him … down to … hell…”
That last word stretched and stretched until it became
clear it was riding a long, soft, terminal exhalation.
Her body settled against the steps and the confusion and pain drained away from her face, leaving behind only her beauty, cast now in cold serenity. Looks Away bent forward and kissed her lips, and then touched his forehead to hers. He sat that way for a long time.
Grey withdrew his hand and stood, then sagged back against the far wall. He stared down into the darkness below them. He fancied that he heard a ghostly voice whisper his name. Not down there, but somewhere behind him. Was it the voice of his sergeant, Harrison? Was it Corporal Elgin? Was it the whisper of the woman he’d loved and lost so many years ago? Was it Annabelle’s voice calling him as she walked along with the others he’d failed and abandoned?
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I am so sorry.”
For a moment, for a splinter of time, he felt a shift in the world. In his world. As if that apology, given here in this blighted place, meant with a heavy heart, had caused his legion of ghosts to falter, to miss a single shambling step.
But that was absurd. Of course it was. The ghosts were nothing more than the shadows of a guilty conscience and nothing more.
Then, like a whisper inside his mind he heard the voice of the witch Mircalla.
The dead follow you everywhere you go.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Very quietly. So quietly only a dead ear could hear him.
That was when he saw the marks on the stone steps.
They were tracks half hidden by the shadows. Small, splay-toed. There were many of them, and their paths crisscrossed in and out of the lines of blood that had run down the steps. Grey frowned and squatted to study them.
What had the poor woman said?
They opened the doorway to Hell and all the chickens got out.
Yes. That’s what she said.
The tracks on the steps were not made by a human foot. Not even the risen dead. These were much smaller and stranger.
Chicken tracks?
No.
They were a little too big and they were …
Strange was the only word that would fit into his mind.
So strange.
Little birdlike feet running through blood down into darkness.
Chickens had four toes.
These prints had two, and both toes had wicked claws.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Looks Away climbed heavily to his feet, pawing at the tears on his face.
“I didn’t realize you two were this close,” said Grey awkwardly.
The Sioux gazed down at the dead woman and then at Grey.
“The thing is … we weren’t,” he said softly. “We were lovers, but that was mostly intrigue. An escape for her and some compassion on my part. It was fun to make a fool of her husband and make fanciful plans about a future neither of us thought we’d ever share. But…”
Grey waited.
“But,” continued Looks Away sadly, “how close do two people really need to be before it’s appropriate to grieve for them? She was a good person who deserved better than this.”
“Yes,” Grey agreed.
“Her husband can rot for all of me, but Veronica … she was truly an innocent in this. Her only crime was trying to help and wanting to be free of domestic oppression.” He sniffed again, then his sharp eye caught the footprints. “What the bloody hell is that?”
“Veronica said something about chickens…”
“Those aren’t chicken tracks. A blind man could see that.”
“I know,” said Grey, “so what are they?”
“I’ll be buggered if I know. They’re as big as an ostrich, but it’s not one of those either.”
“What’s an ostrich?”
“A bloody big bird from Africa. Ugly as sin and cranky as a—. Hello! What’s that?” He jogged down five steps and bent to retrieve an object Grey hadn’t even seen. Looks Away held it out.
It was a feather. Long and stiff, colored a dark orange with a band of black.
“Do you recognize it?” asked Grey.
“No … I don’t, and that’s rather an odd thing. I’m no ornithologist, but I know my local birds, and I’ve never seen these markings. And certainly nothing similar on any bird that could have left tracks that big. Those prints look almost reptilian.”
“Can’t be. They’re in sets of two. No lizard I ever saw walks on two legs. And no bird I can think of could slash a person up like it did to your lady friend.”
Looks Away said nothing, but he let the feather drop from his hand and went back up the stairs to retrieve his shotgun.
They stood for a moment, glancing back the way they had come and then down into shadows.
“We came out here to try and talk sense to Nolan Chesterfield,” said Looks Away.
“Yup.”
“Not to go searching through catacombs.”
“Nope.”
“Our moral responsibility would be to return to town; organize a wagon train; take as much of the gold, silver, and platinum as we can carry; and brush the dust of this town off our feet.”
“That’s smart thinking,” said Grey, nodding.
“There is no sane or intelligent reason to go down these stairs.”
“None that I can think of.”
They stood there.
“Shite,” said Looks Away.
“Shit,” agreed Grey.
Guns in hand, they started down the stairs.
Chapter Fifty
It was a long way down.
The stone steps curved around and around, and soon Grey lost all track of how far they’d descended. At one point Looks Away stopped and bent with his lantern to inspect the steps.
“These are new,” he said.
“New?”
“I think they were made since the Quake.”
“How can you tell? The house might have been built over one of those old Spanish missions. Those guys used to build all kinds of cellars and sub-cellars.”
“No, that’s not what this is,” said Looks Away. “I know my geology and I’ve been to enough ruins to know one style of stonework from another. The Spanish used broader, flatter stairs. These are narrow and a bit steeper. Much more in the style of French or English castle architecture.”
“If you say so.”
“I do, and I find it rather curious. Chesterfield’s family is from England, and they were rich going back to the time of the Plantagenets. So, while I can see Chesterfield using the building style he’s familiar with, I can’t quite suss out why he cut a staircase so deep into the earth. It must have cost a fortune to do this much excavation through solid rock.”
“He could afford it.”
“Okay, fair enough,” said Looks Away, “but why spend that money on this? What the hell is down here that’s worth all of this effort to conceal it from the world?”
They had no answers.
Until they reached the bottom of the stairs.
The steps ended in another circular chamber. Once more there was a single doorway. Once more it was open.
More than open.
The door had been torn from its heavy iron hinges and smashed to kindling. Pieces of it were scattered all around. There was blood on the floor and walls, and the scuff patterns told of a battle between two men wearing ordinary boots and things that made impressions even Looks Away could not read. Much of the bloody spill was smeared as if someone had dragged something long and heavy from inside the room, through that destroyed door, and then back in again. The small three-toed prints were everywhere, but nothing with feet that small could have torn that door down. The timbers of the door had to be half a foot thick.
“I’m having some serious second thoughts about coming down here,” said Grey quietly.
“I’m having third thoughts,” said Looks Away. “And if we don’t find something useful soon I’m all for getting our bums back up those stairs.”
They approached the open doorway and held their lanterns up to reveal what was inside.
&nbs
p; There were three metal carts of the kind miners used. They squatted on wheels, however, not rails. Two of them were piled high with chunks of rock cut unevenly from the ground. The third cart had been knocked over; its contents spilling outward like guts. Grey felt his mouth go dry. The rocks littered the floor. They were mostly crude, a mix of sandstone, volcanic rock, and variegated sedimentary stone. However each piece also contained fragments of a black stone that was streaked with wavering lines of white.
“By the Queens’ lacy…,” began Looks Away, but he couldn’t finish.
Grey estimated that each of the carts could hold a full ton of broken rock. If even after smelting the total yield of all three carts was only a hundredweight of that which was the white-veined black rock, then there was a fortune here to rival two full pallets of gold bars.
“Ghost rock,” he whispered.
And ghost rock it was.
“This is what Chesterfield was hiding,” said Looks Away. “I think he was mining ghost rock and selling it. He was making himself insanely rich.”
“Not sure that makes enough sense for me,” said Grey. “Doesn’t explain why Deray attacked this place. If it was to get the gold and the rock, then why leave it here?”
Suddenly they froze and it took Grey a moment for his mind to catch up with what his senses had recorded.
There it was again.
A sound.
A scuff of a stealthy foot.
Grey raised his lantern and held it so they could see the rest of this chamber.
“Look!” cried Looks Away in a choked voice. “Dear God what is that thing?”
Twenty feet away, caught in the spill of lamplight, stood a creature unlike anything Grey had ever seen. It was nearly as tall as a man, but it was no man. It stood on two impossibly muscular legs, and each foot had two splayed toes. The creature had a third toe, however, and this one was raised on both feet. It was longer than the others and where they had claws, the third toes curved out with a talon as long and sharp as a dagger. But the strangeness did not end there. The thing had a birdlike body, much like a condor, but larger and more massive. And instead of arms or wings it had something that was akin to both. Short, sharp-clawed arms pawed the air and these were completely covered by smoky gray feathers. The rest of the body was covered by feathers that were a rusty orange banded with black. A crest of red feathers ran backward from the center of its skull, however the face was not birdlike at all. It had a protruding muzzle like a lizard, but its mouth was large enough to bite through a grown man’s leg. As it stood there, the thing opened its mouth to display rows of curved, needle-sharp teeth. It glared at the men with eyes that were black and bottomless.