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Vanzir clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re learning, dude. You’re learning.”
I sat down on the edge of the hole and attached a flashlight to my belt, then felt for the rung ladder with my foot. It was best if we saved any lights until we were down in the sewer. Within seconds, a metal rod met my foot, but when I swung down and grabbed hold, there was a hissing sound and pain registered through my palms. I yanked myself back up again. Quickly.
“Iron. The bars must be wrought iron. That makes no sense—wouldn’t it rust in the weather?”
Chase frowned. “This part of the town hasn’t been renovated in years. It could be one of the original sewers, back when they used iron for everything.”
“Wel , I’l need gloves, and Camil e damned wel wil .”
Chase held up his hand, ran back to his car, and returned with several pairs of nylon gloves.
“Always keep spares. I lose a lot of gloves due to this job. They get filthy when I’m rooting around crime scenes. I save my leather ones for business and keep a few of these in the car.”
The gloves were far too large for Camil e and me, but they would work until we got down into the sewer tunnel. I pul ed on a pale blue pair and swung back over the side. The gloves cushioned my skin from the iron. Since I’d become a vampire, wrought and cast iron bothered me a lot less, but it could stil do major damage to Camil e and Delilah. Iron blends and steel weren’t nearly as much of a problem, given our mother’s heritage, but sometimes a piece of metal would trigger the response when we least expected it.
The ladder led down a long ways, far longer than I expected it to, and by the time I found myself standing down below on a walkway, I had just about given up hope of it ever ending. I quickly stepped to the side and switched on my flashlight, scanning the area. Nothing in sight, though I did see a pile of rat droppings. The tunnel didn’t look like a sewer tunnel, though, and it occurred to me that we’d been off about our assessment of the area. For one thing, the floor was cobblestone in some areas, wood in another.
Once the others were down, I lowered my voice and said, “This is no sewer. No wonder it was an iron ladder. What is this place?”
Chase flashed his light around. The walkway ran both right and left, and there was an alcove right across from us. In the alcove were crumbling boxes, an old wooden chair, and a smal table.
A row of shelves lined one wal of the niche.
“Crap. I don’t believe this.” Chase stepped over the crumbling wal that exposed the cubbyhole.
“I know where we are.”
“Where?”
“It’s part of the underground Seattle tunnel system that was abandoned when it began caving in.”
In the early days of Seattle, the city had original y been built a lot lower than now. After a horrendous fire in 1889, the city streets had been rebuilt one to two stories above the original streets. For a time, customers would climb up and down ladders between the original buildings and the newer sections of the city, but eventual y, al of Seattle sprawled across the higher levels, and although the subterranean network remained hidden and unused, it was stil a viable network of passages beneath the city.
“I thought the Underground Tour stopped a number of blocks away,” I said.
Chase shook his head. “It does. The tour only covers a smal portion of what was the original underground city. There actual y used to be a series of nightclubs down here—not in this area in particular, but running the length of the tunnels. But they closed up one after another as the structural integrity of this area weakened, and eventual y most of the areas were abandoned, forgotten and hard to get to. I had no idea the tunnels ran al the way into the Greenbelt Park District, but that makes perfect sense.”
A chil ran up my spine. This city was getting spookier by the second. Memories of The Night Stalker flashed through my head. Delilah loved Darrin McGavin, and I’d had to break it to her that he was dead.
“So what’s that cubbyhole? That’s too smal to be a nightclub.”
“Some of the shops had basements that became part of the whole underground scene. My guess is that it once belonged to a shop now buried. We’re on a lower level than the regular underground Seattle. We’re in the sub-basement area. I real y had no clue the tunnels spread out this far, or this far belowground.”
I looked right and left. “Which way should we go?”
“Which way leads into the heart of the Greenbelt Park District?” Camil e asked, pul ing off her gloves and tucking them in a side pocket of her skirt. “Since we think the kil er is nesting there, it only makes sense to go in that direction.”
“True. Let me see . . .” I glanced around. “If this tunnel runs north-south, then we want to go north, which would be . . .” Turning to the right, I nodded. “This way. Let’s go. Marching order same as when we descended the ladder. Camil e and Morio, keep a good watch on our backs.”
As we headed down the walkway, Camil e coughed. “The air’s dank here.”
As we headed down the walkway, Camil e coughed. “The air’s dank here.”
“Is it breathable? Are you going to have trouble?” I wouldn’t have to worry, but the rest of them would.
“Yes, we can breathe, but there’s a lot of mold down here, I can tel that right away. Watch for viro-mortis slimes. This would be the prime place to find them.”
As if on cue, my light caught something clinging to the wal to my right. I jumped back as we saw an indigo patch of ooze sliding along paral el to us. The creature sparkled in a pretty, jel ylike fashion, but that was as good as it got. The indigo viro-mortis slime was deadly.
