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“Those are Marlowe’s rooms.” Kit Marlowe, onetime playwright, was now the Consul’s chief spy. And in the paranoid Olympics, he took the gold. I was betting that even in a magical fortress surrounded by guards, he’d warded his rooms. And, knowing him, probably with something lethal.
Caleb took his hand away under the pretense of straightening his lapels. And didn’t put it back. I guess he agreed with me.
The emergency lights were still working on the next level, casting a red stain over the old rocks. The passage at the top of the stairs turned a couple of times, passing shadowy rooms filled with strange equipment. Cables snaked underfoot, walls were lined with a lot of slimy things in jars, upended cages were everywhere and the overhead fluorescents flickered like horror movie lighting.
“Sigourney Weaver shows up and I’m out of here,” I muttered, surprising a laugh out of Caleb.
“We already killed the alien,” he reminded me.
“You sure about that?” Pritkin asked.
He was a little ahead of us, around a bend in the passage. We caught up with him to find that this level was also empty—of people. But there were plenty of other things prowling, flying and oozing around to make up for it. It looked like someone had been running a menagerie that the disaster had set loose. A very creepy menagerie, I decided after getting a close-up look at something pale pink and orange that was sliming its way out of a hole in a crate. A mass of jellylike similar creatures could be seen inside, waiting their turn. The pretty colors didn’t help obscure the fact that it was frighteningly like a huge slug.
Only it had small, angry, coal-black eyes. Intelligent ones.
I scrambled back, fighting an urge to lose my dinner, while Caleb swore and pulled a gun. I caught his arm. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” His brief good humor was completely gone.
“You can’t just kill it.”
“You didn’t have that problem in the chamber!”
“We were being attacked in the chamber!”
“And now we know by what. Some perverted experiments your vampires were running!”
He took aim again, but I guess his powder must have been wet, because the gun didn’t fire. He scowled, muttered a spell and tried again. This time, the gun worked fine, but I knocked his arm and the shot went wild.
The sound was enough to send a small stampede down the corridor, away from us. “I said, no killing!”
Caleb glared at me. “She’s Pythia,” Pritkin reminded him quickly.
“Not mine,” Caleb said grimly.
“Then who is? Or do you intend to fight this war without one?”
The two stared at each other for a moment, and then Caleb swore. “We can’t do this with those things jumping us at every turn!”
“They don’t look too interested in attacking to me,” I pointed out.
“And what about the ones that are?”
“We’ll take care of them if and when we find them.”
“And if these creatures find a way out of here? You want to let something as potentially lethal as the things we killed loose into the general population?”
“We’re nine levels down! And these don’t look too dangerous to me.”
“Looks can be deceiving. We know nothing about their abilities, about why the vampires were breeding them,” he argued stubbornly.
I watched as the slug thing started to ooze away from us. The underground streams would probably survive the pending implosion. What if the creature got into the water system? What if several did, and they started to multiply? There could be thousands within weeks.
“Most will die anyway,” Pritkin pointed out quietly, “of starvation or drowning or by being crushed under a mountain of rock.” He nodded to where a couple of sort-of birds were already feasting on something’s remains, tearing off strips of flesh with their long black beaks. “Or at the claws of the larger predators. It’s kinder this way.”
I stared at the impromptu feast and felt my stomach roil. “Do what you have to,” I finally said. “I’ll be at the top of the stairs.”
The sound of gunfire and the smell of smoke followed me up. It was dark and silent at the top except for a faint blush of light from below. I sat down, wrapped my arms around my knees, leaned my head against the wall and tried not to think at all. Which was when a hand reached out from the dark and covered my mouth.
