CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

 

 

Something was different about the mines.

Kimberly pressed one hand to the dirt. The walls were slick as if with dew, cold beneath her fingertips. She traced along the bulging, muscular form of the mud wall and shivered. The air smelled of mould and gasoline, but that wasn't what felt so strange.

It was something in the rock. A vibration she couldn't put words to. Like the mines themselves were humming in anticipation. Yes, that's was it was. A tuning fork had been struck, and the echo was now inside the earth, purring in the marrow of Rustwood's bones.

It was an alarm. Something knew she was coming.

Of course. This was the old queen's city, after all. And if the new queen, the pretender, the beast, whatever she was, was the daughter of the true matriarch, of course she'd know all the alleys and back passages of her realm.

The question was, how much could she feel? Darling had mentioned something back at the Mission about how, as the queens grew larger and more powerful, they also became less exacting. The world slipping from their claws, fingers, whatever they had.

If a single ant were to crawl across Kimberly's skin, she'd feel it, know exactly where it was, fight not to scratch at its looping paths. But if she went to the beach one day, closed her eyes and lay down in the hot sand, could she count the difference between twenty, thirty, a hundred hungry insects settling on her forearms?

Could a queen tell exactly how many invaders were borrowing through her mines?

She looked back at Chan and the dead woman, Darling. "I never wanted to come back down here."

"Then let's get out as fast as possible," Darling said. "Stay down here too long and you start to see things in the dark."

Chan clutched her pistol tight, a flashlight they'd rescued from Barry's shop in her left, beam fluttering across the walls. Sidearms didn't look right in some people's hands. Fitch, for example. His big, broad hands were built for pipe bombs or the green-glass curves of Molotovs. Not something so manufactured. Fitch with a gun would be like catching him wearing neat loafers and a pocket square. But Chan? Chan looked right. Less a cop than a soldier, moving on the balls of her feet, ready to whip out and strike.

If she had to have anyone watching her back that wasn't Fitch, Chan would do just fine.

At that moment, the flashlight bulb fluttered. "Son of a bitch," Chan said as they were dropped into blackness, the only sound the echo of their breath, the skid of pebbles underfoot. "Hope you've got a map, because there's no way we're getting out of here otherwise."

"Don't worry," Kimberly whispered. "Just keep one hand out and-" She caromed off a wall, sparks jumping behind her eyes. Dull pain flared across her brow - she'd walked into a shelf of stone. "Fucker!"

"You okay? Christ, I can't get this thing to work."

Kimberly clutched her face with one hand, the dynamite held against her stomach with the other, feeling blood trickle across her knuckles. The shapes, she remembered. The shapes were in her. All she had to do was let the thing in her belly speak them out loud, whisper them into her mind.

Maybe that was what had held her back. She wasn't asking the thing inside her. She was demanding, and nobody liked being ordered around.

All she had to do was ask.

"Dead lady," she said.

"Come on, Kimberly. You can do better than that."

She grit her teeth. "Darling. Take the dynamite." A slow, careful, transfer of weight. Then, both hands free, Kimberly made a bowl with her palms.

Fire, she thought. Light. Not for me. For you. We need to find a path. We need to see where we're going. This is for you. Work with me. Light, please. Light.

Blood ran from her forehead, dripped into her cupped hands. It might've been her imagination, but she thought that slow trickle had purpose. Not a random spatter, but a pattern, carefully curated by the thing inside her.

Her own blood formed fine curves and jagged angles. The words rose up, automatic, the thing in her gut puppeting her tongue.

Fire burst in the palm of her hand, travelling along the lines of blood painted from thumb to wrist. Just enough to light their way, not enough to be seen from the outside.

"Very nice," Darling said. "I'm a little jealous, actually."

Beside her, Chan winced. "Doesn't hurt?"

"It's cold. I don't know why." She waved one finger through the flames. It tickled, but not in a good way. More like the way a crumb caught in the throat tickled, but this was beneath the skin. "Can we keep moving? I don't want to be stuck here any longer than I have to."

They walked on down the corridor of dirt, the flame in Kimberly's right hand their only guide. The mineshaft twisted and looped. Sometimes Kimberly felt like she was headed uphill, pushing toward the surface. Other times the slope grew so steep she had to walk sideways to keep from tumbling down, down, down into the dark.

It was another ten, maybe fifteen minutes - hard to tell, in the gloom - before she saw something shimmering up ahead, a light playing across the damp walls. Unnatural, cold and hard and stuttering like a dying fluorescent bulb.

The queen.

Flames still boiling in her hand, Kimberly looked to the dead woman with her explosives, Chan with her sidearm and busted flashlight.

"This is it, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"No quitting."

"Didn't realise that was an option."

"What about you, Darling?" She remembered Fitch's doubts at the mine entrance, his none-too-subtle warning. "Is this where you swap sides again and cut our throats?"

The dead woman's grin was serrated. "Was thinking about it. Changed my mind. You and yours, you're okay." She turned towards the light, one stick of dynamite dangling from each hand. "You finally learned my name. See, the new queen never called me Darling. Never called me anything."

As one, they stepped into the light.

 

"So."

"So."

Goodwell shifted from foot to foot, rain filling his shoes, sticking his shirt to his back. He and Fitch had set their sticks of dynamite in the correct places, lining the mouth of the mine. They'd inserted the detonators, gingerly playing out lengths of cord. They'd positioned the pickup and the van in the correct places, pointed at the black hole through which, they hoped, Kimberly would soon come running.

Nothing to do now but wait, and waiting was the worst part.

"When this is over-"

"Was waitin' for you to ask," Fitch said.

"You planning on settling down? Playing at being a good boy?"

"Why? You gonna arrest me if I don't?"

Goodwell snorted. "Where would I lock you up?"

"You'd find a way, Detective. You're a resourceful son of a bitch." Fitch stood ten yards back from the mine entrance, hands in the pockets of his jacket. He was unmoving, staring into the black. Rain poured over his thin hair, his scarred cheeks. "No, no quiet life for me."

"Even with one queen dead?"

"One isn't enough. They've both gotta go before this town is free."

Goodwell pressed back against the van, shuddering. The old queen's commands still echoed in his mind.

Remove Fitch.

All he had to do was convince the man to vanish. Become a regular citizen. Walk and eat and sleep and shit and forget about the monsters beyond the margins. And god, hadn't he tried? Shown Fitch the regrowth by the convent. Grass pushing free of muddy earth. Life bleeding through the margins as the pretender's power receded.

And he still wouldn't quit.

There had to be an ultimatum, he thought. Couldn't keep playing this game forever. Had to show him the old queen's might. No subtlety. Just force.

But the old queen saw all. And, as Fitch continued to glare into the mines, as the rain ran in streams from his slicked-back hair, Goodwell began to suspect that she wouldn't be pleased with all his dancing around.

She'd given an order. He'd twisted it as far as it would go.

Even gods had limits.