Matt Archer: Redemption (14 page)

My right hand drifted to my knife’s handle, sheathed in my thigh pocket. I felt both hot and cold and I knew Dorland’s eyes were trained on the back of my head. The silence on the radio let me know both Lanningham and Blakeney were very interested in how this played out, too.

“What message would you give me?” I asked, not the man from the square, but his father.

The old man recited something that sounded like a poem, and his son murmured it along with him, then translated it into English:

In darkness walks light; in light, darkness

The warrior, the blades

Broken, joined, remade

Light, once bound, will rise

To reclaim the heavens

And, redeemed, the rift between them mends

Forever

A strange recognition of these words, from deep within my bones, rose. I’d never heard them, but I knew them. Like I’d been born knowing them.

And I wasn’t sure I liked what they were telling me.

Trying to control my growing concern, I asked, “Was the Jinn evil or good?”

The old man reached out to pat my leg. “He just
was
.”

I let out a half-hysterical chuckle. “So you speak English, too?”

“A little.” The old man sounded delighted by the joke. “You’ll find what you seek in the waste tunnels under the city. The creatures come out at night and people are afraid. Show the fearful what light can do to things that are dark.”

Sewers, exactly like Mamie said. I wondered if she’d known this was where I’d end up, in the home of a man whose family had been touched by magic generations before. If this was the
something
she wanted me to find here in Morocco.

I stood and laid a hand on the old man’s head. “I will. Consider your message delivered and your mission from the Jinn fulfilled.”

He let a long sigh. From the sound of it, it was a sigh he’d held for most of his life. “You honor our house.”

“You honor mine,” I said, then turned to leave before he could see how my knees were shaking.

Lanningham and Dorland didn’t say anything as we walked back to the square. Blakeney didn’t call in, either. I wondered if they were digesting the same thing I was.

What, exactly, had to be broken then remade? The blades?

Or the warrior?

PART TWO

Fire Burns

Chapter Sixteen

All I could think as we scurried to the parking garage to pick up Blakeney was what the prophecy might mean.

Mamie had been so sad and quiet around me, ever since she read Ann’s mind that first time in D.C., when we discovered Ann had sold us out to Congress. What had my sister seen? Me, lying broken and bleeding?

And what was this “remade” bit? Would I have to destroy my knife somehow? Re-forge it? But how would we even do that without releasing Tink and her brothers to the void once more?

I stumbled, then caught myself even as my brain tripped over that thought. Is that what the verse meant? That I’d have to give up my knife, and Tink, to finish this war? How could I survive without her?

My thoughts hiccupped again. When had I gotten so attached to Tink that the idea of having my brain to myself was painful, rather than a relief.

Was I going a little crazy?

Then I realized this wasn’t worth worrying about, not yet, and a detached calm washed over me. My grandma used to say “don’t worry about tomorrow when today is smacking you in the face.” My mom had some choice words about the difference between courage and acquiescence. Both pieces of advice had always served me well. Today, I had monstrous, man-eating serpents to deal with. Tomorrow, it would be another problem. Then another. And another. I’d worry about this other stuff when it was staring me in the face.

Until then, I had work to do and I wasn’t about to lie down and cry about it.

“Archer, you okay?” Lanningham asked, breaking nearly twenty minutes’ silence. “You’ve been pretty quiet since we left that house.”

“Just thinking,” I said. “Snakes, battle plans—stuff.”

He and Dorland exchanged worried glances, but didn’t ask again. We walked up to the parking garage, an ornate structure behind an even more ornate hotel. All I could say is that Morocco liked its style. The high arched entryways mixed with square corners and the sandstone colored walls were tastefully lit up by thousands of lights. On our way through to the Humvee, I got a peek of a lush garden and pool through a barred security gate.

“Wish we were staying here instead of that generic hotel near the warehouse,” I murmured. I could do with a few minutes peace in this place once I washed the blood of the hunt off my hands.

“Consider it done,” Lanningham said, whipping out his phone. He dialed as we walked, then put the phone up against his ear. “Davis, change of plans. We need a reservation at the Les Jardins De La Koutoubia hotel …. Yeah, I’ll hold.”

Blakeney was waiting for us and popped open the storage hatch so he and Dorland could load up. “How heavy do you want to go in?”

“No idea,” I said. “We know where they were, but nothing tactical.”

“Well, we’re going into the sewers, so grenades might not be a good idea,” Dorland said. “Too much fire power plus low grade concrete equals a cave in, and I don’t want to be caved in with a bunch of wastewater and man-eating snakes.”

“Ditto.” Blakeney handed Dorland a flamethrower. “This might be a good idea, though.”

Dorland sighed. “Only if we’re sure there’s not a bunch of methane down there.” He gave me an irritated look. “Can we flush the bastards out? If we go underground, the three of us will be dead weight to you.”

“Bullets
might
work,” I said. “Head shots killed those spiders in Australia.”

“First time for everything,” Blakeney said, nodding. “But I’m not sure we should trust our luck to hold.”

Yeah, because it never did.

“I know it is,” Lanningham was saying as he came over to the truck. “Put the colonel on.” He covered the phone with his hand. “Davis is worrying about the price.”

“Tell him I’ll pay for it,” I said. I had enough money to fund a college education—and then some—saved in the contractor account the Army set up for me. Given what awaited us at the end of this war, who knew if I’d even make it out alive, let alone go to college? I might as well spend my savings on something stupid.

Lanningham shook his head and uncovered the phone. “Yes, sir. I understand that …. ” The lieutenant raised his eyebrows. “Sir, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was necessary. … Yes, he is. Yes, sir. Thank you.”

I wondered what Uncle Mike had asked him and why Lanningham was so hell-bent on fulfilling this whim for me.

“Colonel Tannen take care of us?” Dorland asked.

“Yeah.” Lanningham glanced at me “He said the Moroccan government offered to pay for some of our expenses, so we might as well take them up on it.”

Rock on. “Okay, then, let’s get to work.”

After some additional argument, during which a number of tourists walked by, their eyes wide as we decked ourselves out in weaponry that could lay waste to the hotel—or a city block—the others finally decided we’d run a quick scouting mission into the sewer tunnels to see if we could use ordnance or explosives to drive the snakes above ground to give us more room and opportunity to kill them off. And we were doing all of this in a crowded tourist city.

Suddenly, I kind of missed desert ops. And having Uncle Mike as C.O.

“While y’all were coming back, I had Davis put me in contact with the public works here,” Blakeney said. “We’ll find an access point to the main sewer system at the southwest corner of the Jemaa el-Fnaa.”

“Nice work, sergeant,” Lanningham said.

“I ain’t just a pretty face, sir.”

“You can say that again.” Dorland grinned. “I’m the only pretty face around here.”

“Hey!”

Relieved they were joking around, I decided to pile on. “And I’m the brains of the outfit.”

“If you’re the brains of the outfit,” Lanningham said, giving me a little shove, “we better lock ourselves in the Humvee and hope those snakes don’t come for us.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir,” I said. “All right, who’s up for a little nighttime stroll?”

“Hooah!” Blakeney crowed, causing a gaggle of women in sunhats to jump and scurry to the hotel.

“Stop scaring the wildlife,” Dorland said. “Let’s go.”

We were halfway to the square when the crowd started moving against us. Some people were pushing and shoving. Others were flat out running. Every one of them looked terrified. Screams broke out and a few people went down under the crush. We fought our way through slowly, as if we were swimming in an ocean of wet cement. I feared that, like concrete, the crowd would set into a solidified mass and we’d never break free.

Dorland began shouting in French. Whatever he said was taken up by the people nearby and soon the message was being relayed deeper and deeper into the crowd.

“What’s going on!” I yelled, so he could hear me over the din. “Something happen?”

“Yeah,” he said, stooping to pick up a little girl and set her on a low wall, out of the crush. “Our prey popped up in the middle of the square and grabbed five or six people. This is the mad rush to get away.”

“What’d you tell them?” Lanningham asked, using his large body to elbow a path through. We filed behind him and the crowd started to give us room.

“That we’re on our way to kill the terror that stalks them, but they had to calm down and let us through.”

“Good thinking,” I said. Mobs were dangerous, and I had to think at least a few people had been badly hurt during the stampede.

When we got to the public works access point, police were keeping the area clear, and one was shouting something into a megaphone.

“Arabic,” Lanningham said. “Mine’s rusty, but I think he’s saying it’s dangerous and to disperse.”

“Is there a waste water plant on the other end?” I asked. “Maybe we can drive them out someplace less public and make this easier.

Blakeney nodded. “There is, but it’s eight miles away.”

If I’d had a wall nearby, I would’ve banged my head on it. “We can’t track these things eight miles through a sewer. Underground fight it is.”

Lanningham and Dorland were talking to the police in a mix of French and Arabic. After a minute, Dorland said. “Eight people, captured by three serpents. Five were killed on street level. Three more down below, including a five-year-old girl and her mother.”

“We’re bringing them out. Alive,” I snapped. “I’m going in. Watch my back.”

“
I’m
going in first,” Lanningham said. “To make sure there’s not something lying in wait for you.”

I thought briefly about overruling him, but he was right. I couldn’t jump in the middle of things anymore. I had too big a part to play from here on out. “Okay.”

We filed through the path the police had made for us and a man in coveralls met us at the manhole. “I open it for you,” he said in halting English.

Once the cover was off, the man leapt back like he was scared a snake would pop out. Instead, steam, reeking of a stench I would never, ever forget, floated up. It smelled like a landfill had gotten busy with a latrine and had kids. My eyes watered.

Lanningham checked his ammo stash, then climbed down the rungs on the side of the tunnel leading into the sewer.

“All clear,” came a muffled shout from below.

Good—my turn. I gave my knife handle a squeeze, then climbed down the ladder. The smell got worse briefly, then for some weird reason it faded. Water flowed in a stream down the center of a large circular tunnel with a pump station off to one side. The dark down here would’ve been absolute, save for the little bit of twilight coming in from the portal above and Lanningham’s flashlight.

I moved forward five paces and waited for the other two to climb down.

“Which direction?” Lanningham asked once Blakeney’s boots hit the ground.

“Not sure. Tink? Talk to me.”

They’re down there. We’re not far from their nest.
Her voice held nine shades of vengeance.
We should pay them a call.

“What about the people they took? Still alive?”

She was quiet a moment.
One. The child. We’ll find her. Trust me.

“I do.” Here, Tink was my guiding star. I closed my eyes a minute, tuning into her energy, and slowly turned my body downstream. There was a tug in that direction, some kind of blot that spoke of old, evil places.

“How many people have died here?” I asked, my eyes still shut.

“Forty-two in the last six days. That includes nineteen children under the age of ten,” Lanningham’s voice echoed back to me. “And however many tonight.”

Children died here
, Tink growled.
Scared and alone, in pain in the dark.

Like the little girl I’d lost in Afghanistan. Like all the children sacrificed to Ann’s dark arts. “Not today.”

So what are you going to do about it? You can still save the one,
Tink said. Her rage was contained by my will alone and I let her strength flow into my muscles and bones, until I became an instrument of death.

“Everyone, behind me,” I said. “From here on out, I’m calling this one. Rifles ready and keep a handle on the flamethrower. We might want it.”

Letting that dark tug guide me in the right direction, I followed the sewer to its first branch, and took the left tunnel. The walls were narrower here—barely wide enough for two men to walk side by side—and slick with mold. The scent of rotten eggs grew stronger the farther in we went. It might be the wastewater, but demons always smelled of sulfur.

I held up a fist and the team stopped behind me. For the last several minutes, the only light had been Lanningham’s flashlight, but now another light grew.

My knife’s handle was glowing green.

We were close. While Tink was infinitely more than just the knife, in some ways the knife was more than just Tink. It sensed Dark brothers in the same way she did, through some magic all its own.