“Darin’ of you,” Patrick said, “to threaten an earth Charmer all the way down here.” It might have been lighthearted, except for the glare Patrick leveled at his father.
“It’s a matter of family honor, Patty,” John replied, pulling bullets from his pocket and rolling them around on his palm. “It’s Colson law to put holes in bastards that test our loyalties,” John’s eyes flashed with menace at us. “That way, we ain’t got to worry about people comin’ between us.” John’s eyes flicked upward to where Patrick watched him as closely as one couldhere in the crust of the earth. “Remember that man who picked Donny’s pockets, Patty? How you took off his finger with a paring knife?”
“I do,” Patrick said slowly. “He was takin’ advantage of a blind boy.”
“He was.”
“Just imagine what I’d do to the man who took advantage of me.” His voice was full of dark promise, and perhaps he meant it for Theo, or even Polly.
But he was looking at John.
“Tell me again, Dad,” Patrick said. “Who was it that gave my medium to the House?”
John gave no response. The two stood lock-eyed, a gun and three traitors between them.
And I volleyed my gaze between the two.
A distinct crack of timber suddenly echoed down the tunnel. The sound ricocheted back to them and they all ducked on instinct, as though bullets were flying. We froze.
Silence for a moment. Then a subsonic groan. A dawning awareness on Patrick’s face as he stared down the tunnel, and then he shouted, “Run!”
He picked Theo up by the scruff of his neck and shoved him back. Another crack rang out, the sound of falling earth, the yawn of a monster at their backs.
“Get up!” John shouted at Polly, lobbing her forward. “Go!”
The lantern light swung over Patrick’s eyes. In them, I saw pulsating fear.
I scrambled to my feet and bolted back the way we’d come.
We threw ourselves back down the tunnel, the snap of timber chasing us, each strut giving way as the earth above us bore down, sought to devour us, jaws closing. I poured my mind to it, felt the idium thrum beneath my skin, already lethargic. I couldn’t slow my feet enough to concentrate, couldn’t hold it all up after expending myself earlier. The ceiling above us held only long enough for us to pass beneath it, my mind releasing it again soon after and letting it buckle. Patrick kept one hand in the middle of my back, and I kept one hand to the ceiling.
I felt the earth hounding us. Eventually it would catch our heels and we’d be sucked under.
A fork ahead. John moving for it like a snake moves through grass. He disappeared sideways, pulling Polly after him, then Theo.
Patrick hooked his arm around my waist, and with a tremendous push, hurled me around the bend.
I toppled on top of Theo, my knees hitting metal.
And we were plummeted into deepest black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINEDONNY
In the first dregs of morning, Donny roused Gunner.
They had slept once more in their bunks, like kids. Gunner above and Donny below, beams of dawn breaking in through the small window. Patrick’s childhood bed lay empty. There was a silent agreement that neither of the men use it.
Of course, Donny had never left. Gunner had married and taken a house on Penance Street, and Patrick, when he did sleep, preferred sleeping in the hotel. But Donny knew these stairs and each individual floorboard. He knew every surrounding inch of the house. He thought he could draw it, if he were artistically inclined, to near perfection. He stayed for the persisting comfort of it.
Gunner groaned and rolled over heavily. “Lord, kill me now,” he rasped, as though his lungs had emptied themselves overnight.
“Time to return to work, brother,” Donny said, pulling on Gunner’s earlobe, then the hairs on his bare chest.
“Ow!Fuck.”
“Get up,” Donny said. “No more shirkin’. There’s men in the western tunnel.”
“There’s always men in the western tunnel,” Gunner growled, pushed Donny’s face away.
