The Sunken City Trilogy Read online

  “Diz...” Holly said carefully. “What is this?”

  “I don’t know,” he grunted back.

  “Why are we here?”

  He slowed his breathing, pushing the anger deep down inside of him so he could look up and meet her eye. He admitted, bitterly, “I haven’t heard from Grace. I’m worried something’s happened.”

  The sound of a slap rang down the road, Holly’s hand suddenly stinging.

  She hadn’t realised it was happening until it was done. She stared at his reddening face, holding her open palm out to the side as though considering hitting him again. Barton didn’t move. He held her gaze with tired eyes.

  “Diz,” Holly said through gritted teeth. “If you’ve done something...”

  “I haven’t done a damned thing,” he said, though he accepted the blow as though he deserved it. “I just don’t know where she is and it’s no coincidence. And this bastard” – he raised his voice, taking the canister from Holly and shaking it to the air – “this bastard is messing with me!”

  He was so furious himself that Holly’s own anger seemed pointless. She could hear her breathing increasing in speed, not for the first time realising that her husband might be more animal than man. She kept quiet, kept staring. She hadn’t heard from Grace either, had she? She’d assumed – she’d just assumed. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “What now, then?” she asked.

  Barton didn’t have an answer. He just started broadly striding back to the car.

  Barton’s mind was ticking over the possibilities for the journey home. Holly’s eyes were fixed on him, so he avoided looking at her. He needed a solution. Maybe the Blue Angel had hidden Grace to trick him into coming back. Maybe Rufaizu was involved too, maybe Pax. It had worked, after all. Got him riled up blindly following their directions. Exposed once again to the glo, drawn to it like an insect to light. Grace would be safe, though, if it was all a trick. Or she might be with a friend after all. Or she might be genuinely missing, abducted by some other psycho, and the Blue Angel had simply taken advantage of it.

  That possibility was the worst.

  When they pulled into their drive, he could feel Holly’s intake of breath and knew what was coming next. She was going to ask what he was going to do. He hadn’t come up with a good answer yet.

  But she didn’t. She said, “What’s that?”

  A white envelope sat by the front door.

  He knew, the moment it caught his eye, exactly what it was. He rushed out of the car before Holly, hurrying to grab the envelope. He’d torn it open before he had stood up straight.

  A simple note, on a small piece of paper, written in large, untrained letters.

  We have your daughter. Safe. We’ll be in touch.

  15

  Pax groggily opened her eyes and stared at the horrendous criss-cross of plastering in the ceiling. She blinked a few times, focusing on the pain in her shoulder and arm. It seemed to have subsided to a slight ache, where there had previously been burning agony. She sat up, seeing she was on the floor. She rolled her shoulder. Nothing.

  She took off her hooded sweatshirt, heavy with sweat, and threw it aside. She pulled back her t-shirt and looked at her shoulder. A wide bruise surrounded an indentation like a dog’s bite mark, which had already scabbed over. Whatever it was, the danger had passed and left a rancid urine-like smell.

  Pax scanned the permanent mess of her room. Everything still. The shoebox was open and askew. The fairy had gone. Rather than tempt contact, Pax lumbered to the toilet. She relieved herself at length, with a greatly satisfied sigh, and rinsed her wound with soap and water, before returning to the doorway. There were plenty of places for a two-inch person to hide. She said, “You still here?”

  There was a quiet shuffle, a waking curse. She followed the sound to the base of the bed. One of her spotless Nike running shoes. Letty pulled herself up over the ankle of the shoe and looked around like a mouse poking from a burrow. She yawned loudly. “You pulled through, huh?”

  Pax crouched in front of the shoe and said, “What happened?”

  “Saved your dumb life, didn’t I?”

  Pax picked up the shoe before Letty could complain. She lifted it to her face, the movement knocking the fairy back inside. Letty shot back up the wall of the shoe’s ankle and angrily said, “This shit stops, we agreed. You think for a minute to welsh on our deal –”

  “Please,” Pax said quietly. “It’s easier to hear you.” She shifted onto the floor and leant against the bed before lifting the shoe and Letty up to eye level. “You slept here?”

  “Seemed safe, looks like it’s never been used,” Letty said. Pax shrugged; it was a fair observation. “Now, you’re up. Time to take me to my boys.”

  “Do you ever let up?” Pax murmured back. “What time is it?”

  Pax searched the floor for her phone and picked it up with her free hand. 3.03am. Two missed calls from Darren Barton. She closed her eyes for a moment. It was too late to call him back, wasn’t it?

  “Hey! Focus!” Letty shouted. “Time is an issue here. You heard that prick yesterday, didn’t you? Considering my idiot boys never came for me, they’re no doubt doing something monumentally stupid right now. And you, you lunatic, you have that thing.” Letty pointed back towards the cupboard. Pax followed the small gesture to the odd contraption of Rufaizu’s. Apothel’s? The Fae’s – whoever. “Which means whatever stupid thing my boys are doing is not going to go well.”

  “Why not?” Pax asked quietly.

  “Because my people want the goddamned Dispenser back!”

  Pax stared at her silently.

  “Thick-shit, it’s time to get moving!”

  “Give me a minute. Are you at least gonna explain what happened to me?”

  Letty smiled, proud of what was about to come. “You got bit. I saved you.”

  “The crus adsecula.”

  “Oh get out. Don’t speak Ministry around me, okay? It was a pentanid. They’ve got a toxic bite with one cure. Similar cure to a lot of the shit in the Sunken City, as it happens. Fae fluid.”

  Pax blinked and responded slowly, “What fluid?”

  “I pissed in the wound, okay?”

  Pax kept staring. Not sure if there was a correct way to respond.

  Letty prompted her: “Thank you is enough.”

  “It was spreading through my body, you said – how could you –”

  “Oh I’d already done it by then,” Letty said. “You gotta get it quick.”

  “You what? Then that deal –”

  “Fucking stands,” Letty said quickly. “Don’t you dare.”

  Pax paused, then said, “If I let you go, are we even? I can walk away from the Fae, at least?”

  Letty’s face hardened. She shook her head. “I can bury a grudge, but you’ve definitely seen too much. That’s your problem, though. Mine is that you get off your arse and take me where I gotta go.”

  Pax glanced at her phone again, then to the kitchen. “We’re not going anywhere, not yet. I’m beat. A drink was part of the deal, wasn’t it? We can talk, seeing as you’re no longer plotting to kill me.”

  Letty watched her warily. “You trying to change my mind?”

  By way of answer, Pax placed the shoe on the bed and got up. She walked to the kitchen as Letty climbed out of the shoe and watched. Pax grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge and popped the cap. She turned and held it up for Letty to see. “This do?”

  Letty hesitated, clearly not wanting to condone the distraction. She had a thirsty look about her, though, drawn to alcohol. She said, “Got any spirits?”

  Pax opened up a cupboard and took out her selection of bottles, one after another, until Letty chose one with a thumbs up. Pax poured a small measure of rum into the cap and returned to the bed. Letty took it in both hands, the cap spanning her shoulders’ width. Pax knelt in front of her and raised the beer bottle. “Cheers.”

  Letty took a big swig of rum, made an appreciative gulp
and let out a fearsome belch. Pax cracked a smile. She said, “How are you so loud when you’re so small?”

  “Fuck you, I’m tall for a Fae,” Letty said, failing to answer the question. “This is good. Good rum’s rare. Maybe you’re not a total idiot.”

  “I won it,” Pax said. “Collateral from a rich guy who ran out of cash.”

  “Okay.” Letty lowered the bottle cap. “I’ve endured this shit for a full day, so I guess I gotta ask. What’s your deal?”

  “Huh?”

  “This.” Letty pointed to the room. “Who the fuck are you? Clearly you don’t work or have a life, just dirty boys’ clothes and a collection of gambling books. What are you, the thinking man’s degenerate?”

  Pax reconsidered her surroundings from the fairy’s perspective. The clothing, partially strewn about the room and, in many cases, unclean. Then there were the books on poker and psychology, dog-eared from rereading. Plain, bare walls. A stack of empty beer bottles by the sink. There was, at least, one point she could make: “They’re all women’s clothes, actually.”

  “You work nights, right?” the fairy said. “Too poor for drugs and no way you’re a hooker.”

  Pax pointed at the books. “Figure it out.”

  “Card games? Can’t be much good, needing to read all these books about it.”

  “I do all right.” Pax caught the defensive note in her own voice and frowned. She looked at the books: the psychology tomes of Herman Lakers and Dutch McRory’s Cash Game Analysis were genius literature that she treasured. Piotr Venk’s Lockpocking Masterclass was harder to justify, but everyone needed hobbies. She said, “I’m good enough to have a chance in the WPT next week. I wouldn’t expect a psychotic elf to know what that means, though.”

  “Elf?” Letty laughed without mirth. “Good one. Miss WPT, I could teach you things you can’t learn in books. You’ve only ever played against humans. I’d destroy you.”

  Pax raised an eyebrow, curious. She said, “How? Physically, I mean. You can’t –”

  “Oh, we can,” Letty said. “Online, for starters.”

  “You have the internet? On what? Miniature computers? Phones? With apps?”

  “Yeah,” Letty answered harshly. “We wipe our arses with toilet paper, too.”

  Pax let out a little snort of a laugh, almost choking on her beer. As she wiped her mouth she commented, “There’s an image.” She paused, then said, “I don’t play online.”

  “So we use a Fae deck. I can deal and tell you what your cards say,” Letty said.

  “Thanks but I’ll pass.”

  “You’re no fun. Where’s your three Fs?”

  “What?”

  “The things any Fae needs. Fighting, fucking and funnies. You’ve got none of them.”

  “Funnies?”

  “Shitting with people. Having a laugh.”

  “I have a laugh,” Pax insisted. “My work isn’t exactly ordinary.”

  “Oh yawn. Do you have,” Letty asked slowly, giving the question the full weight that it deserved, “any friends?”

  Pax drank for a moment, rather than replying. Why was she having to justify herself? “Do you?”

  Letty went quiet. She seemed to consider the question seriously. “I played a game with Apothel, you know, where I convinced him to use our cards. He was an idiot. And he raised an idiot kid.”

  Pax shifted a knee up under her chin. “You were friends once, weren’t you?”

  Letty hesitated, then said, “Who gives a shit.” She took a big swig of the rum. “Good riddance to him. The lot of them.”

  “Hey.” Pax tapped the duvet next to her, drawing her full attention. “What happened between him and your people? Why the theft and why the murder when you all wanted the same thing?”

  Letty shook her head. “I told you – he cut me out of that part, didn’t he?”

  “But you never wanted to know –”

  “Forget it. We’ve talked enough.” Letty flung the bottle cap back and chugged down the rest of the rum. The cap finished, Letty threw it aside and stood up. “Time to go.”

  Pax stared at her. It was a big question mark, and something the fairy either didn’t know or didn’t want to face.

  “We have a deal,” Letty snapped.

  “You have my word,” Pax said, “I’ll do what you ask. But the moment I let you go, I’m in the shit, aren’t I? And if that’s how it’s gonna be, I want to be informed and I want to be rested. So I’ll give you a choice. Keep talking, let me know everything, or clam up and we get some sleep. Either way, we’re not leaving, not yet.”

  Letty stood silent for a moment. She took a breath and let it out with a loud groan, looking skyward. “Ugh. This had better not be an elaborate Ministry set-up. I swear, I’ll cut out your tongue.”

  The threat made Pax smile. The fairy’s tone had changed, no longer fully serious or angry. Letty was ready to work with her.

  16

  Grace Barton stirred with a splitting headache, groggy and confused. The ground around her was hard and damp, cold. She pushed herself up, blinking and trying to make sense of the murky grey. She looked up, into a wall of eroded brick. Concrete floor. Dust. She murmured to herself, “What the hell...”

  She rose wearily, back onto her haunches. The only illumination was a sliver of artificial light creeping in through a high window. The ceiling was twenty feet up, rising into corrugated iron, but the room itself was maybe fifteen feet square. There was a single metal door. It was completely quiet, completely still.

  “Hello?” Grace called out, afraid of who, or what, might answer.

  Nothing.

  She put a hand to her head and moaned, trying to figure out what had happened. The last thing she remembered was drinking in the park. No. There had been voices. The press of metal against her skin. Going somewhere by car. A clumsy bit of blind walking. Sitting on a cold floor. Peeing awkwardly into a bucket. She spun around. It was there in the corner shadows. The metal bucket, her only luxury in this room.

  They had taken her. Kidnapped her. But it was hazy, like she had been only half awake. Which bits were a bad dream?

  “Oh, Christ.” She put a hand to her head. “How much did I drink?”

  She took out her phone and saw a number of missed calls and a handful of upset messages from her dad. She tried to call him back, but the phone buzzed off. No signal. She struggled to her feet and swayed on the spot, then noticed the chill for the first time.

  It had been ambitious to head out on an autumn day in shorts. Now it was the dead of night and this creep’s den had no heating. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed them to try and keep warm.

  Whimpering, fears starting to fill her mind, she whispered, “Daddy...please...”

  “Oughta have some fun with her, while we can,” Mix commented to Fresko on a rafter, as they watched the girl stir. He took out a cigar and lit it with a generous inhale.

  “Don’t want anything more to do with them than we have to,” Fresko replied. “Big ugly beasts, makes me sick that we need them.”

  Mix allowed himself a small laugh at his friend’s negativity. He pointed the cigar down. “At a distance she’s not so bad. Imagine she was our size, you’d do her.”

  Fresko gave him a look. “She’s a kid.”

  “Lighten up,” Mix sighed. “This is gonna come together. You make sure her shit of a father does as he’s told and I’ll tell Val all what we’ve done. Get some extra hands together to collect the weed and the Dispenser.”

  “You wanna talk to Val alone?” Fresko couldn’t keep the aggravation from his voice. It had been bad enough taking orders from Letty, but at least she thought things through. Mix was a walking heap of hormones, only interested in how best to cause damage. Fresko needed to plan all the details. The simple concepts of bringing the girl round to walk herself inside, of leaving her a bucket to piss in, the idea of leaving a note for her thick-skulled father. Left to his own devices, Mix probably would’ve knocked the girl out
before getting her in the car, even. There was no telling how he’d screw things up during a chat with the leader of the FTC.

  “Got a better idea?” Mix sneered. “Think one of us needs to stay and watch her? She’s not going anywhere. Or you want me to manage the dad?”

  “No,” Fresko said. There was no way around it: whatever task Mix was left with, it’d be a risk. “Once we’re done with the dad, and done with her, we go to Val together.”

  Mix went quiet as he eyed Fresko, taking the comment as a criticism. Rightly so.

  “Please!” The girl’s voice rose from the room. Maybe she’d heard them. She turned on the spot, searching the shadows. The low light bounced back off the tears on her cheeks. “Someone! Anyone! You can’t leave me here!”

  “All right. Go on ahead,” Mix said. “I’ll shut her up.”

  Fresko shot him a look and said, “We might need her.”

  “Relax. I’ve dealt with her sort before.”

  “She doesn’t need dealing with.”

  “She will. One way or another. You know that, right? Her, the dad, whoever else. We’re not leaving a trail.”

  Fresko looked down at the girl. She was crying. “My family don’t have any money, if that’s what this is. And...and...”

  “Leave her be,” Fresko said, trying to keep the situation manageable, “until we’re done. We don’t need complications right now. We need leverage.”

  Mix let a moment pass.

  “We good?” Fresko asked carefully.

  Mix nodded, his smile anything but warm. “Sure. But when this is done we need to talk, don’t we? A crew of two don’t work, does it?”

  “No,” Fresko said. “All the more reason we need to pull this off.”

  The girl thumped a balled-up fist into her thigh. “You can’t keep me here!”

  Mix shouted, his voice booming through the room, “We’ll do what we want with you, bitch – get used to it.”

  Grace went silent, staring up at the rafters, unable to see them. As Fresko watched her eyes quiver with fear, he had to hand it to Mix. The guy had a voice that could contend with the humans.