I lost the flashlight. I didn't lose my gun. If the fall had killed me, I still wouldn't have lost the gun.
I'd landed on my side. I blinked dazedly into the blackness and realized…yeah, that wasn't an Auphe gate. You fell, asshole. Now get the hell up. It was easier said than done. I wheezed as I pulled air into shocked lungs and tried to move. That's when I felt the fingers on my leg. They crept up under my jeans and touched my calf, circles of ice on my bare skin. They moved soothingly, stroking my leg as they sucked the warmth from it. Sawney. Only Sawney drained the heat from you like that. I growled, low and incoherent, in the back of my throat and tried harder to move my arm, more specifically my hand holding the gun. Oxygen-starved, I didn't have much luck.
"Cal?"
It was from above. Niko. He'd managed to avoid falling with me. Good for him. I wasn't surprised, but I was a little relieved.
"Cal?" This time it came from beside me, along with the crunch of boots landing on the debris of shattered tile. There was light, a hand on my face, and then the silver sweep of a sword. The frozen touch on my calf disappeared just as the claws had begun to puncture the skin. That trademark crazy laugh went with them.
I let my arm relax. A futile tremor was all I'd gotten out of it anyway. In the flashlight's glow I could see the Eagle resting in the dirt, my white finger lax on the trigger. I also saw Niko's boots move closer, and then, as I looked upward and he simultaneously knelt, I saw his face. He was pissed as hell. "Sawney." He ran a quick hand over my arms, legs and spine. "I am going to enjoy killing him far more than I should."
I'd gotten a few breaths in and coughed out, "You…and … me … both."
With his help I managed a sitting position. I looked up in time to see Promise and Robin jumping down. It was about ten feet down from the tunnel floor, and they managed it with ease. Certainly more ease than I had. Promise seemed to float down while Robin came down quickly and lightly, a hand bracing his ribs. I knew how he felt. I hung my head and concentrated on breathing. Drowning, falling—I was getting tired of not breathing. "More tunnels?" I asked, shifting my shoulders against a blooming all-over ache.
"New tunnels with the tile replaced and fixed into place over them. Sawney must have had the revenants dig them," Niko said. Hands slid under my arms and hefted me to my feet. "An effective trap."
I wobbled, then steadied. "Sneaky fuck."
"Pithy, but accurate." Robin used his flashlight to scan the circumference of the pit. "Where did he … ah. There." There was an exit, one small enough you'd have to crawl through it while dragging your dinner behind you. "Wonderful. Crawling through dirt. Color me filthy and excited."
"Filthy and excited, and exactly how would this be different from your norm?" Promise asked with the perfect appearance of genuine interest.
"Well, color me annoyed as shit," I gritted before Goodfellow had a chance to fire a shot back. I twisted the crick out of my neck and started toward the hole.
Niko fisted a handful of my jacket, holding me back as he moved ahead. "My turn to go first," he said mildly.
He did it with more grace than I had. Soon we were all standing in a new tunnel. Nine by nine, it was carved out in the earth beneath the asylum tunnels. "Our little friends have been busy." Robin looked around, bent down to touch the dirt door, and came up with a finger wet with red mud.
"Very busy indeed," Promise added. "That is fresh. Tonight's kill."
"Good. That means we're close." Niko moved— fast, smooth, and still as coolly pissed as he'd been when he'd dropped down into the pit.
I hadn't thought of this whole mess from Nik's point of view. Sawney had defeated him easily at every turn, had killed allies he'd enlisted, had attacked his brother with impunity and actually consumed part of him. Niko was not happy—in no way, shape, or form—and was determined to make this encounter with Sawney our last. My brother—he'd never learned to spread the blame around. It was our failure, not his, but he wouldn't see it that way. Couldn't see it that way. He'd lived the majority of his life under the weight of sole responsibility. There was no changing that habit now.
One damn good brother, but as I'd thought many times before, too good for his own good.
As we moved, we found more signs of Sawney's victims. There was no more jewelry, but there were clothes. Ragged and dirty. Knit caps and ancient coats. Shoes with peeling soles. So many clothes was bound to equal a whole damn lot of victims—the homeless we'd known he was concentrating on now.
He'd figured out pretty quickly that these weren't the days when travelers disappeared and it was considered a hazard of the day. He knew people would look for him if he stuck to your average New Yorker