C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

“You’re making fun of me,” Margrit accused again.

He shook his head. “Not this time. You show amazing fortitude.” Margrit ducked her head, absurdly pleased, and Alban smiled enough for her to hear it in his voice. “I can think of two options-go back the other way and see where the far end of this drain leads, or take the tunnel back up to my room.”

“Where Tony and half the NYPD are probably pulling your books apart.”

Alban growled, deep and low enough to lift hairs on Margrit’s arms. She raised a hand in apology. “Hey. Hey, sorry. I hope they’re not.” He growled again, and Margrit dropped her hand, sighing. “Going back doesn’t seem like a great idea, is my point.”

Stone scraped against stone, sending reverberations bouncing through the tunnel, the sounds so deep Margrit’s ears itched. Alban lifted the torch again, his expression becoming wary as he looked beyond Margrit toward the dead end. He flashed into human form as she spun to face the wall, which shifted with slow deliberation. Brick dust shivered into the air, hanging there before drifting down to the dank water. Alban’s torch threw soft shadows into the darkness beyond the opening, then caught reflections from eyes and teeth as figures began to creep forward into the light.

Margrit backed up until she stood beside Alban, gripping the leather bag with both hands as if it was a weapon. He rolled his shoulders, dropping into a slight crouch, and growled through bared teeth, as though he forgot which form he wore.

A blond woman with short-cropped hair came out of the darkness, splashing without concern through stagnant water, firelit drops rolling down her leather boots. “Got the coppers after you, do you,” she said, then let go a sarcastic snort when Alban and Margrit’s stiffening shoulders answered the question against their wills. “This tunnel dead-ends on this side, too, so it looks like you’ve got two choices, loves. You can come with the lady, or you can go back and face the tiger.”

“Alban,” Margrit said through her teeth, “what is she?”

The blonde stepped forward with the confidence of a cat and took Margrit’s jaw in her hand. Margrit jerked away, wondering if the woman ever slipped, and if she did, if she washed herself as if to say, I meant to do that.

“What am I? Is it blind you are, girl? I’m the lady. The coppers back there, they’re the tiger. Get it?”

“I get it. Alban?”

“Just a woman,” Alban said cautiously. “Just the lady.”

“Just!” Mock offense filled the woman’s voice. “I’m a hell of a lot more than just, love.”

“What are you doing down here?” Margrit asked. She didn’t look as if she belonged in a sewer, not that Margrit knew what someone who did belong in a sewer looked like. The woman’s pants and coat were leather, too, as water-treated as the boots, and the collar of the coat came up to her chin, fitting snugly. She looked like she barely needed an excuse to shoot someone.

“Oh no,” she said. “I get to ask the questions-these are my tunnels, see. But I already know what you’re doing. So. Make your choice. We can close the door back up and you can rot, or you can come with us.”

“We’ll come with you.”

The woman smiled. “Smart girl. C’mon, kids.” She turned on a heel and strode back toward the opening.

“Did she mean us?” Margrit asked quietly. Alban spread his hands without answering, and followed the blonde.

A dozen teenagers closed in around them as they stepped through the opening. One pushed a switch on the wall and the door swung closed, subsonic rumblings making Margrit’s ears itch again. “I think she meant them,” Margrit muttered.

Alban murmured an unintelligible curse to the ceiling. Margrit looked up to see a boarded-over square in the concrete.

“Your exit?” she asked. He nodded.

“Been wondering,” Grace said. “Found that a good six or seven years ago. Closed it right up and dug the other hole. Took weeks to build this door.” She thumped the tunnel end with a fist. “Nice to know that years of paranoia pay off. Come on, now. Keep an eye on them, kids.” She strode off again, the teens gathering around Alban and Margrit and, by force of numbers, ushering them forward.

They walked through concrete tunnels and slushy, thick water until Margrit’s feet were numb and Alban’s torch burned low. Occasionally they dropped down a level, or came up one, but Margrit had the sense they stayed largely on a single plane. Other than that, she had no feeling at all of where they were or where they were going. Questions to the teens-all of them dressed similarly to the blonde, in waterproofed, warm leather or denim-earned her skeptical looks and no responses. After a while she stopped trying.

Eventually the air cleared, and one of the teens yanked a heavy steel door open, gesturing them all up a rickety wooden staircase into the basement of a building. Another dozen young people, all of them clean and wary, climbed to their feet, watching the newcomers arrive. The blonde barked an order and the teens scattered, two returning minutes later with tea and towels. Margrit took a towel gratefully and sat on the floor, pulling her shoes off to rub life back into her feet.

“Thank you,” she said, when blood began to tingle painfully in her toes.

“You’re welcome,” the blond woman said. “There’ll be food soon. While we’re waiting, why not explain to me why I shouldn’t kill you?”

“Why would you have waited this long if you were going to kill us?” Alban asked.

The woman’s smile went bright and sharp. “There’s a bigger audience here.”

“That gun you mentioned the first time I met you,” Alban said to Margrit.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t really have one, do you?”

She let out a humorless laugh. “No.”

“It wouldn’t matter if you did.” The woman lifted two fingers, dollars held between them. “I’d have taken it from you. Your pockets,” she said to Margrit, who stuffed a hand into her jeans, coming up empty.

“That’s my money!” She looked around at the silent teens, then back at their ringleader. “Jesus, what are you, some kind of Fagin’s Morlocks?”

“You don’t seem like the literary type, love. I’m in awe.” The woman crouched in front of Margrit, still holding her money aloft. “It’s not even a bad description.”

Margrit stared at her, then tossed her head in a gesture of futility and frustration. “You’re Grace O’Malley. The vigilante. I should have recognized you.”

“Why?” she said easily. “Ever seen a picture, love?”

Margrit caught her breath, startled. “No. Nobody ever posts a picture of you. Why not?”

“Grace doesn’t like having her picture taken.” The woman curled her fingers around Margrit’s cash, then slowly lowered her hand. “Compromises safety, it does. And so do you, love. You want to live, I need a guarantee that our little secret down here isn’t going to be spilled.”

“Why’d you rescue us? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just let us rot?”

Grace’s eyes deepened with a sad smile. “Because it’s what I do, love. I take a risk on the ones who got left behind. But you think I’m one of the bad guys, don’t you?”

“She ain’t,” a boy mumbled into his knees. “All of us, we’re off the street ’cause of her. We’d die for her.”

“An army of children?” Margrit asked, disapproval coloring her voice.

Grace curled her lip. “Not for me. For each other. It doesn’t always work.” Her eyes grew dark and sad again. “Kids die out here. Stray bullets destroy dreams. Drugs do it slower, but just as certain. The ones who stay with me usually get out, and that’s about all anybody can do. But the thing about me is people don’t know how I get around.”