N. Wilson - The Dragon's Tooth

Cyrus grabbed his sister, and the two of them followed the tall black suit out of the alley and into a little square. There were people, but not many, and all of them stopped to watch the big man with the body.

Cyrus looked up, searching the sky. A single black shape was visible against the blue, almost motionless, hanging in place.

“Cyrus,” Antigone said. “Why are we here?”

The big man, turning sideways, managed to force his way through a small glass door, a little brass bell ringing as he did. The name of the place was arched in gold letters on the front window.

“Milo’s Pizza,” Cyrus read. “I don’t know, but we should go in.”

It was early and the pizza place was empty. It wasn’t even open. Two prep cooks were leaning out of the kitchen watching the driver and his load stagger through the dining room toward a door in the back. Black-and-white tiles checkered the floor, and rickety chairs were perched on the tables. An old Pac-Man arcade game chirped in the corner.

“Hey,” Cyrus said.

“We’re not open.” One of the cooks raised a sauce-covered spoon. “You can’t be in here.”

“We’ll just be a sec,” said Antigone, and grabbing Cyrus by the wrist, she pulled him between the tables.

Gunner had opened the door in the back and was setting Horace down. He stepped to the side, holding the door open. Horace was hunched on an old toilet.

“What?” Antigone asked. “What are we doing?”

The driver beckoned them in, shut the door, and locked it.

It was a tiny bathroom, and there wasn’t enough room for two people, let alone three and a man as tall as the door.

“This is one of the old entrances,” the driver said. “It’s been closed for I don’t know how long. Might be blocked. Couldn’t say when it was last used. Hold on to the sink.”

A plastic air-freshener high on the wall spritzed essence of pine tree onto his cheek.

“Ack!” The driver grimaced and spat, blinking in pain, and then hunched over and lifted the lid off the toilet tank. Plunging his hand into the water, he began to feel around. The toilet flushed.

“What—” Cyrus didn’t finish.

The floor shook and fell away.

Cyrus had only fallen downstairs once before, and they had been straight. These were spiral stairs, twisting down around an old cast-iron sewer line. And he was tumbling with his sister.

Gasping, yelping, crushed and crushing, the two of them rolled and flipped down the metal stairs and sprawled onto cold, wet stone. Nearby, water was running.

Antigone groaned.

Cyrus pushed her off and sat up, coughing in the darkness. In the ceiling above them, he could see the little well-lit and floorless bathroom. The toilet hung in the air, and Horace’s legs dangled over the sides.

The big driver, with his legs spread, squinted down into the darkness. “You all right?” he asked. “I told you to hang on to the sink.”

Heaving the little lawyer over his shoulder, he carefully descended the stairs.

At the bottom, he tugged a chain, and a strand of naked lightbulbs fluttered to life.

They were in a tunnel. The walls were made of brick, slimed green and black, arching into the ceiling above.

Cyrus stood up. The stone floor came to an end a few feet from where they had fallen. Beyond the edge, with a mounded back like a snake’s, dark water raced past. Above it, a large basket hung on a heavy cable.

Cyrus glanced back at his sister. Wincing, she managed to stand. “Wow. What now?” She looked at the basket. “No,” she said. “We’re not getting in that.”

“From here, it will be easy for you,” the driver said. With Horace still over his shoulder, he wheeled a flight of stairs out of the darkness and pushed them to the water’s edge. Kicking on a foot brake, he began to climb. The stairs squealed and bowed beneath him.

“No.” Antigone shook her head and looked at her brother. “We don’t even know where we’re going. I’m not getting in a moldy basket dangling over some sewage river in a pitch-black tunnel.”

The driver heaved Horace into the basket and backed down the narrow stairs.

“We’re just going to shoot off somewhere? What happens if the cable breaks? Why are we even doing what you say? We don’t know you.”

Cyrus scanned the tunnel. His head was throbbing and his world had shattered, but he knew what to do next. He knelt by the water, dipping his sticky hands in the cool current. “Not the time, Tigs,” he said. “We’re in it now.”

“I’m Gunner Lawney,” the driver said, and he wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Johnny’s nephew. Got into some trouble and came up from Texas ten years ago. Was supposed to be an Acolyte, but that didn’t work out too well. But I found my niche.” He smiled. “I can drive, and I can shoot. Beyond that, pretty useless.” Gunner nodded at the basket. “Now get up in there. I gotta get back to the car and get it out of here.”

“What makes you think we can do this alone?” Antigone asked.

“You have to,” said Gunner. “Climb on up and I’ll tell you what to do.”

Cyrus splashed water onto his face and stood up. Antigone groaned, and then stepped behind her brother, pushing him toward the steep, rickety stairs. He climbed carefully, each narrow tread sighing in his hands, and when he reached the top he had to stretch for the edge of the basket. He pulled it toward himself, threw a leg in, and tumbled over the edge onto Horace.

The little lawyer moaned, and the basket swung.

Cyrus sat up and reached back for Antigone’s hands. She grabbed his wrists and he grabbed hers.

Antigone’s teeth were clenched, her eyes wide. “Cy, if you let go, I’m going to kill you.”

Cyrus smiled. “If I let go, you’re going to float away in a black river.”

Antigone jumped, clipped her knee on the edge, and fell inside.

“Great!” Gunner yelled. “Cyrus, there should be a lever in the front of the basket. Pull it when I tell you.”

Cyrus found the lever and waited. Powdered rust came off on his hands.

The basket jerked and the sound of grinding metal gears echoed in the tunnel.

He stood up and looked over the edge. Gunner was standing beside another lever in the wall. Two huge flaps had opened out of the sides of the river. Water was mounding over and around them, forcing them forward.

Something in the ceiling began to click like a roller coaster.

Cyrus looked up. The basket hung from a pulley, straddling the grease-covered cable above the water. But two smaller cables were looped onto hooks on the pulley, and they ran up into the ceiling, where an enormous spring as thick as Cyrus’s thigh was whining as it stretched.

“Oh, gosh.” Biting his lip, Cyrus sat down on his sister’s feet. She had Horace’s head propped on her lap and was squinting at his shoulder.

“The bleeding stopped,” she said. “At least on the outside.”

The clicking in the ceiling slowed. A final metallic click. And then … nothing.

“Get yourselves to the Galleria!” Gunner’s voice filled the tunnel. “Someone will take Horace to the hospitalers. Now hang on tight and flip the lever. I’ll look you up in Ashtown.”

Cyrus slid back beside his sister. “Hold on, Tigs. This is dumb. Really dumb. Are you ready?”

Antigone sniffed and tucked back her hair. “No,” she said. “Not even close. Not even a little bit. Now do it.”

Cyrus kicked the lever.

CYRUS HAD NO way of knowing how far that first launch took them, only that it was far and fast and black. The basket bobbed and swung in the wind, occasionally grazing the walls where they narrowed, occasionally kissing the surface of the water, and at one point just missing another basket hurtling in the opposite direction.