Charlaine Harris: Must Love Hellhounds

“If we’d known, we could have brought metal cleats,” Batanya said practically. “Perhaps someone should have told us.”

Crick was wise enough to keep his response to himself. He just grinned at Batanya in a foolish way. “There’ll be less traffic at nighttime,” he whispered. “We’ll have to wait it out.”

Some hours passed, and the activity in the tunnels died down. The three spent the passing time trying to ignore the smell of both the heaped bodies and the dark area beyond them at the end of the tunnel, perhaps five yards farther. The area had evidently been used as a latrine in the recent past, and though the functional amenity was handy, it was also unpleasant to be around for any length of time-and all they had was lengthy time. Very lengthy. The two Britlingens dozed, ate a couple of energy bars, gave Crick another, and drank sparingly. Presumably there were underground springs somewhere; almost all living beings needed fluid. But they hadn’t seen one, and the map showed only the tunnels.

“At least we haven’t seen any animals,” Clovache said in a bright whisper. “I wonder how they supply themselves with meat?”

“There are pens of cows and other edible creatures, kept pretty far distant from the rest of Lucifer’s palace,” Crick said. “Why are you glad we haven’t seen animals?”

“They might bark,” Clovache said quickly. In the dim light that pervaded the tunnels, which varied quite a bit from one tunnel to the next, she looked as if she wished she hadn’t spoken.

Crick looked curious, which was probably his natural condition. “You wanted to avoid dogs in particular?” he said. “Why?”

There was an awful moment of silence.

“Because this large scar on my face was caused by a dog. I got it on my first mission,” Batanya said, with no inflection at all. “We were protecting a guy who bred attack dogs. His breeding and training methods were famous. A rival of his, as a practical joke, bribed one of our client’s kennel boys to feed the dogs an irritant that acted on their nervous system.”

“How did that turn out?”

Batanya shrugged and looked away.

“Not very well,” Clovache said. “I hadn’t finished training. A man named Damon was Batanya’s junior. This alleged practical joke cost him his life.”

“Did your client live?” Crick asked Batanya directly.

She met his eyes. “Yes,” she said. “He lived, though he lost a leg and one hand. Damon died after four hours. I got the scar.”

That was end of all conversation for a long time.

Batanya gradually became convinced that it was night. It was hard to tell with no change in the light, but it felt like night to her. She gave Clovache a hand signal. After a quick check of all their accoutrements, the bodyguards prepared to move. According to the legend on Crick’s handy-dandy map, they were about a mile from their objective as a crow flies, if a crow would be demented enough to navigate the tunnels of Hell.

Clovache glared at the map, which in some ways was a godsend, in other ways completely useless. Fumbling their way ignorantly would have been nearly suicidal, but the map would have been so much more valuable if it had shown the rooms that must be lying somewhere. Presumably, in this huge underground empire, there was a throne room for the king, a refectory of some kind, a prison, an audience chamber, and so on. As it was, they knew where they had to go in order to retrieve Crick’s left-behind treasure, but they had no idea what they might encounter on the way there.

“It’s not like we ever knew what to expect anyway,” Clovache said to Batanya, who nodded. They’d been partners long enough to have abbreviated conversations.

As if her words had been a self-fulfilling prophecy, they rounded the next bend to find two armed guards blocking the way.

“We heard you coming a mile away,” said the one who was least humanoid. He was a not a demon. In fact, Batanya had no idea what his origin was. He was quadrupedal, gray, and clothed in a material like cobwebs. He had a device in his hand that looked like the frame for a tennis racket. With a dexterous motion, he swung the thing toward them, and a large-weave net flowed out of the frame to land over Batanya and Crick, who was right behind her.

Clovache fled, rightly figuring that someone needed to stay free. To the hoots and jeers of the two guards, Batanya unsheathed her short sword and began sweeping the blade from side to side. To her vast irritation, the strands of the net stuck to the sword and moved with it. The net was so elastic that it didn’t provide enough resistance to be severed.

“Shit!” she said. From the corner of her eye she saw that Crick had adapted and was working with his dagger. He was having better luck with his smaller blade than she was with her sword, so she pulled out her own knife and began cutting. The second guard, a human who looked quite a bit like Trovis, had drawn some kind of handgun, a hazardous decision in a rock tunnel. Since a ricochet was just as likely to wound her or her client as it was to hit the one who deserved it, Batanya threw her dagger through a rent she’d just made in the net and killed the Trovis-like human, who gurgled dramatically before he crumpled to the floor of the tunnel. There was a certain flash of satisfaction in the moment.

The net-thrower seemed startled that things weren’t going his way, and he wasn’t keeping the net mended quickly enough to contain Crick and Batanya. Crick was working very quickly, which was good, since Batanya had been forced to return to using her sword. She’d changed her technique to the more effective one of stabbing through the net in short jabs, rather than trying to sweep a large cut through the strands.

Batanya was startled to see something long and dark slide past her on the tunnel floor. By the time she realized it was Clovache, the other woman was on her feet and plunging her neotaser into the mass of the net-throwing thing’s body. A good jolt of electricity will interrupt almost any being’s thought processes, and it had a dramatic effect on their gray enemy. All four legs shot out and began skidding around on the slippery surface of the tunnel. The effect was weirdly like dancing, but when Clovache delivered another jolt, it became evident that the creature was in its death throes. It collapsed in a spidery heap, twitched a couple of times, and lay still.

“That was brilliant,” Batanya said, trying not to pant.

“I took a running start, threw myself down, and away I went. It was just like sliding over ice.” Clovache looked rather pleased at the compliment. “Especially at the sides of the floor where no one walks.”

Crick was staring at them wild-eyed while Batanya cut the remnants of the tattered net away from their limbs.

“You all right?” Clovache asked him, clapping him on the shoulder by way of encouragement.

“Yes,” Crick said. He took off the idiotic goggles. He had quite sharp blue eyes underneath them. Without the sparkly distraction, his face was bony and agreeable and intelligent. “I want to say right now, you two are worth every penny I paid.”

“Say that after you get back alive,” Batanya advised him, as Clovache deposited the neotaser into the pocket designed for it. After the slide across the slug slick, her summer armor was a little grubby, but completely intact. Clovache’s hood had come off in the fracas, and she tugged it back over her matted hair. (“If you have an iota of vanity, this is not the job for you,” the sergeant who’d recruited her from her home village had said. Clovache, like all the young recruits, had lied.)

“We have to get out of here fast,” Batanya said, and without another word, they all stepped over the bodies and hurried down the tunnel. With a glance at the map, Crick indicated a dark opening to the side, again to the left, and they ducked into it, none too soon. Howling, another gray quadrupedal creature loped across the spot they’d just vacated.