The Bone Triangle (41 page)

Waves of self-doubt assailed me. I could not shake the feeling I was doing exactly what all my enemies wanted. Meng did not have to fight me; she only had to dupe me into wandering into the waiting maw of her pocket monster. She and her puppet Gilling were no doubt enjoying gusts of laughter at my expense back in the classroom.

My paranoia deepened, and I began to suspect others. In my imagination, Gutter Jim had sent me here to finish an irritating, uppity rogue after feeding me a ridiculous tale of wanting to live in this horrid world himself.

My imagination grew more fervid when the muck traveled up over my knees. I imagined McKesson lifting a beer to Cartoon, who’d also faked his injuries. The tentacles were rubber, the great eye was nothing more than a balloon with a light inside. I was a fool of the most credulous variety. A drooling buffoon everyone abused and fed scraps to.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said aloud through clenched teeth. “I’m going to end this thing, or die trying.”

I don’t know why I said it, or who I was talking to, but it seemed to break the spell that threatened to overtake my mind and drive me from this place. I found the progress easier after that. The mud did not come to my hips or my neck; instead it receded and I could see my thickly coated ankles. Somehow, I’d kept my shoes on by sliding my feet
forward and not seeking to lift them up out of the vile stuff with each step.

I reached a fork in the tunnel soon afterward, a point I’d been struggling to reach. I looked left, then right. Down the right path, something met my gaze.

It was a guardian, of that much I was certain. I’d seen only one up close before while it assailed McKesson. This one pulled itself from the wall of the tunnel as I watched, and I realized that was how these strange beings traveled. When dormant, they merged with the sludge that crawled over the walls. But they coalesced into a single animate mass upon sensing my approach.

I played the light of the bottle over it, searing its flesh as it charged. Smelling like cooked mud, the monster’s body hissed with heat. When it reached me, it scalded me with its touch, but it was already dying. I’d burned it too badly, cutting black scars with crisscrossing slashes over its chest. It fell at my feet and was consumed by the muck it had come from, melting like a waxen figure in flames.

The
splish-splash
of its accomplice warned me, but not soon enough. From down the opposite passage another guardian approached. It was too close to safely burn, so I raised my left fist and punched at it. I commanded the object in my hand to release its venom upon contact.

For a second, the monster seemed not to feel my sting. It gloated as it closed with me and wrapped its dripping arms around my person. I felt it begin to crush me, as one of its brethren had done to McKesson.

I felt my bones grind together, and I knew what it was like to be an overfilled balloon in a child’s grip. My eyes bulged and my guts churned. Held helpless in the monster’s impossibly powerful grip, I knew I was about to pop.

Then it weakened. The squeezing power relaxed a fraction—not enough to allow me a breath, but enough to keep my bones from snapping.

The monster shuddered and weakened further. I managed to get an arm free, and I burned the thing’s fingers and toes with a fine beam of radiation. It gurgled in response and then sagged down in a heap of loose material. I straightened, panting. I looked down at the guardian and gingerly toed the remains. I thought I saw the eyes, two flat stones that still glittered with hate as they regarded me from the spreading puddle of its flesh.

I took the left fork when I could walk and breathe again. The tunnel swung around, and I found myself in a large, open chamber.

At the top of the space, I saw a shining light. I found it odd that I’d not seen this powerful beacon when I’d been in the tunnels.

“You’ve come far, food,” said a voice.

I stopped and squinted up at the light overhead. “Who are you?”

“I’m the one who rules here.”

“You’re the Beast? How is it you can speak to me?”

“How is it
you
can speak? The universes are full of mysteries.”

I hated this creature. The arrogance of it filled me with wrath. I stepped forward and directed my bottle toward it. I burned it—or, at least, I tried to. My weapon seemed to have no effect.

“You have a strange taste,” the Beast said.

I knew my attacks had meant nothing to it, but I was determined.

“Show yourself,” I said, walking around the chamber in a circle.

“You gaze upon me even now.”

I peered in every direction, but the walls were the same, muddy matter. Only the ceiling seemed different, with its single brilliant point of light.

“Are you saying this entire place is alive? That you are a being of such size that I’m walking through your guts?”

“You are a digestible tidbit, nothing more. I’ve met up with beings I could not consume, but you are not of that type. I’ll feed on your flesh soon enough.”

Slowly, I came to realize something that had been in the back of my mind all along, but which I hadn’t accepted. This world
was
the Beast. All of its winding passages, clumps of tentacles, and guardians were organs in a singular body of vast, horrid proportions.

I saw what the Beast was referring to now. More guardians were gathering in both the tunnels that led to this place, the heart of the Beast. I suspected it was closer in nature to its brain than its heart, but it didn’t matter. I could not defeat an army of these monsters.

I looked at the walls, however, and an idea grew in my mind.

“
Thias Amasma
,” I said. “If you survive what’s coming, remember never to come to my world again. We are not a buffet of helpless beings. We are deadly.”

“If I
survive
?” the voice laughed. “Such insolence! I’ve encountered unwarranted arrogance before, but never from a puny morsel of meat. I—”

The voice choked off, then transformed into a satisfying howl of agony.

I stood with my left fist plunged into the muck of the nearest wall. I made contact with the flesh of the Beast and commanded the liver in my hand to sting the tunnel walls.

The weapon Rostok had given me convulsed and pulsated in my grip. It pumped venom in rhythmic gushes. As it kept pumping, the monster that was this world began to undulate under my feet. It was beyond speech now.

I glanced up and saw the single staring eye where the bright light had been. I could see it was trying to figure out what I was doing. I directed my bottle at it and seared the eye, which retreated. A gush of steam shot into the room and then the light and the eye were gone.

The Beast went wild after that. I was lifted up into the air and splashed back down again. The walls of the chamber began to squeeze closer, shivering and throbbing. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that if I was about to die, this thing was going to remember me.

Unable to get to my feet due to the wildly rippling floor, I shoved my artifact into the muck under me and stung the Beast again and again. I thought of Cartoon and everyone else I’d seen this thing eat, and I did my damnedest to kill it.

The Beast ejected me, in the manner all indigestible things are ejected. A rip opened and I was hurled down into a dark, underground chute. I’d lost my grip on my bottle, but I still had the liver. I was in a mass of moving water, rushing under the ground. At least the water was clean.

Gasping and bumping along, I felt relief, despite the fact I might drown in the next few minutes. I could tell I was back home on Earth, as the air didn’t have that thick, vaporous quality, and the walls around me were made of rough concrete.

I protected my head with my hands, found a way to stand, and braced myself against the rushing flow of water. I couldn’t see a thing and felt blindly about me. I seemed to be inside a large cylinder. It was a pipe deep underground, I suspected. The water was cold and washed the muck from me.

When I could breathe steadily, I saw something with my eyes as I peered into absolute darkness. It was a greenish glimmer, and it was about to float by. I reached out my hand and grabbed my bottle, pouring water from the mouth of it. The bottle brightened at my touch and lit up my surroundings.

I walked in that claustrophobic hell for a mile or more. It was hard to tell in the darkness. I went downstream and tested each step I took in case the next one led me off a cliff into a deeper cistern. My back was bent and was stiff and sore. At times, the pipe twisted, but I never found a route leading upward. I figured I was somewhere under Las Vegas, but didn’t know if I was heading toward the reservoir or away from it.

Finally, I gave up on finding my own way out. I called upon the only being I thought might be able to help me.

“Jim,” I said, tapping at the concrete walls. “Are you listening? I could use some help.”

“You lasted longer than I thought without calling,” said a voice.

I whirled around. A hummock in the water rose up then receded back into a smooth, flowing stream.

“You’ve been here all along?” I demanded. “I could have used some help.”

“How quickly you forget our past differences! Unfortunately, I have not forgotten your abuse.”

I recalled thumping him with a bottle and sitting on him. I grimaced. “Oh yeah…sorry about that. At the time, I thought you were helping the Beast, or at least were in league with those who are.”

“I’ve told you what I wanted.”

“And I’ve done my best. I battled the Beast. I stung it and sickened it.”

The hummock of water rose again in response to my words. It was about a foot high, and I thought I could see a man’s face carved in silver-black flowing liquid.

“You killed it?”

“I can’t be sure. I stung it a dozen times, and I know I hurt it. But listen, you can’t really occupy the Beast’s world.”

“Why not?”

I proceeded to explain that the Beast was a living world of sorts, a creature that lived between other existences.

“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “My plans
may
still work. If it is dead, then its carcass might remain. Like a hollowed-out tree or a natural cave or a leather coat—I could use the remains as a home.”

“Knock yourself out,” I said, trying not to smile.

“Yes…it could be done. In fact, it might be better than before. From all reports, the interior conditions were unpleasant.”

“Extremely.”

“But with the Beast dead, I could redirect a fresh flow of water into the place and cleanse it. Then, with certain other creature comforts added, it might work out extremely well.”

“A unique fixer-upper opportunity,” I said. “Hey, any chance you could give me my reward now?”

“Reward? What reward?”

“I killed the Beast, didn’t I?”

“Maybe you did. But I’m not in any position to—”

“All I want is for you to get me out of here.”

“Oh, I see. I’ll help for a promise—a private arrangement between the two of us.”

“Name it.”

“I will not hunt you when you venture into the underworld, and you will not hunt me when I walk the dry streets above.”

I thought about it for a second. It seemed like a pretty good deal. I didn’t have many allies among the Community, and even to move up to the status of neutrality with one of them was an improvement.

“You’ve got a deal, Jim.”

Less than an hour later I found myself walking on the Strip again. I came to the Lucky Seven, which was still behind a circle of yellow tape and flashing police barriers. Debris, broken windows, and a half-dozen bored-looking cops encircled the ground floor.

I looked up to the highest windows. Was Rostok still up there, sitting in his dark office? I knew the lack of light wouldn’t bother him in the slightest. I figured he probably
was
up there, like a stubborn holdout weathering a storm.

One of the cops came forward when he spotted me. I eyed him warily. I didn’t always have the best relationship with the police.

“Aren’t you Draith?” he asked.

I recognized him then. He’d taken down my report in the Triangle, when the drifter had been turned into a pile of steaming bones. I nodded to him.