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ve’s Baby Soft perfume and the sweetness of watermelon Lip Smackers. The scent was so innocent it threatened to squeeze all the air out of my lungs.
That it was mingled with fresh blood made me want to throw up.
“Penny,” I wheezed.
Holden pressed a finger to my lips to silence me, but he was gentle and his eyes pleaded for me to not fight him. Personally I didn’t think being quiet mattered. I was certain we’d announced our arrival clearly enough when I’d kicked in the front door. He cocked his head to the side, then dropped to his hands and knees and put his ear to the dirty floor.
Oh. He’d been trying to listen.
He beckoned for me to join him, and I collapsed to the floor next to him, our faces mere inches from the huge rectangular slab that must have been someone’s ostentatious final resting place. It also placed me so close to Holden our noses brushed when I lowered my head to listen. Another time, another place, he would have made a comment, but he was totally focused on what he heard below us.
At first I heard nothing.
Then I heard a muffled thump and a scrabbling noise, followed by a short cry cut off halfway. They were underneath us, and the sounds let me dare to hope someone was still alive down there. I heaved myself up from the floor and used all my strength to push against the concrete box. I would worry later about what it meant to desecrate someone’s burial site. For now I wanted to be sure no other lives ended here.
Holden got up and helped me push, and with our combined strength, the tomb slid aside, revealing a gaping hole in the floor. I’d been so preoccupied with getting our obstacle out of the way I hadn’t been prepared for it to move so easily. I stumbled and almost fell into the hole when Holden grabbed me by the waist and pulled me back. In my panic I dropped my sword, and it clattered into the dark pit.
“Shit. ”
Below there was a hiss and a garbled rant that didn’t sound like any human language I’d ever heard.
Bracing my hand on Holden’s forearm, I looked back at him and said, “I need to go down there. ”
“If you think I’m letting you go down there alo—”
I didn’t need to hear the rest of his protest to know he’d follow me, so I squirmed out of his arms and jumped into the hole. In some respects it was a blessing in disguise that the sword fell first. Having heard it fall, I could get a rough idea of how long the drop was so I knew it wasn’t going to kill me to jump.
To be perfectly honest, though, I would have jumped anyway. I have a bad habit of leaping before I look.
As luck would have it, I landed next to my lost weapon. With my eyes still adjusting to the pitch-black space, I dove for the sword, but something kicked it out of the way.
“Ewww rune its,” the thing hissed.
I froze in place. The voice speaking to me was so cold, so inhuman, it made me marvel at how most fae managed to pass themselves off as people in this world. No one in their right mind could do anything but piss their pants when hearing a voice like that. I was not entirely of my right mind so my pants stayed dry, but the rest of me broke out in a cold sweat.
“Ewww cants beee here. ”
It took me a moment to realize it was trying to speak English.
“Secret,” Holden called from above.
“Sort of busy here. ” My gaze darted to the left, searching the ground for where the thing might have kicked my sword.
Though I could see in the dark, it wasn’t quite the same as seeing with the lights on. I could tell there was a creature standing about five feet away from me with its arms limp at its side, but I couldn’t make out any distinctive features. The darkness was too complete for that. Like night-vision goggles, my eyes needed at least a tiny bit of light in order to show me the full picture.
“Heads up!”
I sidestepped in time, avoiding Holden’s landing. He’d had the presence of mind to grab the lantern, and when he straightened up, the room was filled with a dim yellow light. We stood side by side, so close our arms brushed, and took a good look at the monster I’d been hunting all over Manhattan.
Beady black eyes blinked at us, as if the minimal amount of light cast by the lantern was too much for it to bear.
“Ayyy eww deww thaaaa. ”
Holden held the light higher and thrust the lantern towards the creature. It was hard to refer to it as a creature once I could see it properly. It looked more like an accountant. The thing stood about two inches taller than me, on the shorter side for a man, and had a rounded potbelly and cue-ball head. Its skin had the pallor of a desk jockey whose only tanning option was low-watt office fluorescent bulbs.
“This is our monster?” Holden asked.
“Owwwwt,” it demanded. It had fleshy lips that flapped awkwardly as it tried to speak, giving our tubby accountant the appearance of being a drunk tubby accountant rather than just a boring one. “Git owwwt. ”
