Julie Kagawa - The Eternity Cure

We eased forward, quietly but not too concerned with what we might find. Rabids rarely came down here; the Prince had sealed off all entrances into the sewers except a few, for the sole purpose of keeping them out of the city. Occasionally, a rabid would wander down here, but never for long, and never in the huge swarms we’d seen in Old D.C.

As we rounded a corner, there was a shout, and a flashlight beam shone painfully into my eyes, making me hiss and look away. Raising my arm, I peered back to see three pale, skinny figures standing at the mouth of the tunnel, gaping at us.

I relaxed. Mole men, as they were called, had been nothing but urban legends to me when I was a Fringer, just creepy stories we told each other about the cannibals living under the streets, until I’d run into a group of them one night in the tunnels. They were not, as some stories claimed, giant hairless rat-people. They were just emaciated, but otherwise normal, humans whose skin had turned pale and diseased from a lifetime of living in dark sewers. However, the stories about mole men preying on and eating fellow humans weren’t entirely false, either.

That seemed a lifetime ago. This time, I was the thing they feared, the monster.

“Who are you?” one of them, a skinny human with scabs crusting his arms and face, demanded. “More topsiders, coming down to crowd our turf?” He stepped forward and waved his flashlight menacingly. “Get out! Go back to your precious streets and stop trying to invade our space. This is our territory.”

Jackal gave him an evil, indulgent smile. “Why don’t you make us, little man?” he purred.

“Knock it off.” I moved forward, blocking his view of the humans before he could kill them. “What do you mean?” I demanded, as the three mole men crowded together, glaring at us. “Are people from the Fringe coming down here? Why?”

“Vampire,” whispered one of them, his eyes going wild and terrified, and the others cringed. They started edging away, back into the shadows. I swallowed a growl, stepped forward, and the scabby human hurled the flashlight at my face before they all scattered in different directions.

I ducked, the flashlight striking the wall behind me, and Jackal lunged forward with a roar. By the time I’d straightened and whirled around, he had already grabbed a skinny mole man, lifted him off his feet and thrown him into the wall. The human slumped to the ground, dazed, and Jackal heaved him up by the throat, slamming him into the cement.

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” he said, baring his fangs as the human clawed weakly at his arm. “My sister was only asking a simple question.” His grip on the human’s throat tightened, and the man gagged for air. “So how about you answer her, before I have to snap your skinny neck like a twig?”

I stalked up to him. “Oh, that’s a good idea, choke him into unconsciousness—we’re sure to get answers that way.”

He ignored me, though his fingers loosened a bit, and the human gasped painfully. “Start talking, bloodbag,” the raider king said. “Why are topsiders coming down here? I’m guessing it’s not because of your hospitality.”

“I don’t know,” the mole man rasped, and Jackal shook his head in mock sorrow before tightening his grip again. The human choked, writhing limply in his grip, his face turning blue. “Wait!” it croaked, just as I was about to step in. “Last topsider we saw … he was trying to get out of the city … said the vampires had locked it down. Some kind of emergency. No one goes in or out.”

“Why?” I asked, frowning. The human shook his head. “What about this topsider, then? He probably knows. Where is he now?”

The mole man gagged. “You … can’t talk to him now, vampire. His bones … rotting in a sewer drain.”

Horror and disgust curled my stomach. “You ate him.”

“Oh, well, that’s disgusting,” Jackal said conversationally, and gave his hand a sharp jerk. There was a sickening crack, and the human slumped down the wall, collapsing face-first into the mud at our feet.

Horror and rage flared, and I spun on Jackal. “You killed him! Why did you do that? He wasn’t even able to defend himself! There was no point in killing him!”

“He annoyed me.” Jackal shoved the limp arm with a boot. “And there was no way I was going to feed on him. Why do you care, sister? He was a bloodthirsty cannibal who probably killed dozens himself. I did the city a favor by getting rid of him.”

I snarled, baring my fangs. “The next human you kill in front of me, you’d better be ready for a fight, because I will come after you with everything I have.”

“You’re so boring.” Jackal rolled his eyes, then faced me with a dangerous smile of his own. “And I’m getting a little tired of your holier-than-thou act, sister. You’re not a saint. You’re a demon. Own up to it.”

“You want my help?” I didn’t look away. “You want your head to stay on your neck the next time you turn your back on me?” His eyebrows rose, and I stepped forward, my face inches from his. “Stop killing indiscriminately. Or I swear, I will bury you in pieces.”

“Yes, that worked out so well for you last time, didn’t it? And it seems we keep having this conversation. Let me make something perfectly clear.” Jackal, his eyes glowing a dangerous yellow, leaned closer, crowding me. I stood my ground. “If you think I’m afraid of you,” he said softly, “or that I won’t put another stick in your heart and cut off your head this time, you’re only fooling yourself. I’ve been around a lot longer than you. I’ve seen my share of cocky vampires who think they’re invincible. Until I rip their heads off.”

“Anytime, Jackal.” I reached back and touched the hilt of my sword. “You want that fight, just say the word.”

Jackal stared at me a moment longer, then smiled. “Not today,” he murmured. “Definitely soon. But not today.” He stepped back, raising his hands. “Fine, sister. You win. I won’t kill any more of your precious bloodbags. Unless I have cause, of course.” He looked down at the dead mole man and curled a lip. “But if they come at me with knives or stakes or guns, all bets are off. Now, are we going to head into the city, or were you planning to hold hands with these cannibals and have a sing-along?”

I glanced once more at the broken corpse, wondering if his people would come for him and what they would do with his body if they did. Shying away from those thoughts, I stalked past Jackal and continued down the tunnel.

The rusty ladder that led up to the surface was exactly where I remembered it, and I felt another weird flicker of déjà vu as I pushed back the heavy round cover and emerged topside. Nothing had changed. The buildings were still there, dark and skeletal, falling to dust beneath vines and weeds. The rusted hulks of cars, their innards gutted and stripped away, sat decaying along sidewalks and half-buried in ditches. The vampire towers glimmered in the distant Inner City, as they had every night before this. Familiar and unchanged, though I didn’t know what I’d expected. Maybe I’d thought things would be different, because I was so different.

“Huh,” Jackal commented as he emerged from underground, gazing around at the crumbling buildings, the roots and weeds that grew over everything and pushed up through the pavement. “This place is a right mess, isn’t it? Where is everyone?”

“Nobody stays out after dark,” I muttered as we walked through the weed-tangled ditch, hopped the embankment and strode into the street. “Even though the vamps force the Registered humans to give blood every two weeks, and have plenty of bloodslaves in the Inner City, they still go hunting sometimes.”