The Guards, Outfit thugs, and the rest collapsed inward till we established a cordon round three and a half sides. The rest of one side faced the river and consisted of a pair of concrete-walled, silted channels where once upon a time army barges had been loaded from the warehouse. Someone had begun making an effort to clear the silt.
I said, 'That's what you do with your thread men when you aren't using them to set fire to people's houses.'
'There,' Morley said, indicating a small, broken, wooden door that opened on the divider between channels. A wooden ladder in a dangerous state of disrepair clung to the side of the warehouse nearby, leading to the roof. 'That's where I got out.'
Singe asked, 'You climbed that ladder?'
'I did. All the way. In the rain. I stayed on the roof for a day and a half. I should have stayed longer. They heard me coming back down because I said something too loud when I slipped. I got a head start but it didn't do me any good.'
Directing Guards by gesture, General Block asked, 'And how did you get in there in the first place?'
Relway announced, 'We're set at all the entrances. Say when.'
'When.'
Morley said, 'I don't remember that part yet.'
I asked, 'How are you doing now? You able to keep going?'
'I'll have Puddle piggyback me when I can't manage anymore.'
Puddle expressed his opinion about that rather pithily.
Civil Guards broke down doors. Outfit bone breakers rushed inside. Somebody yelled something about idiots not forgetting the godsdamned colored lanterns so friends wouldn't bust the skulls of friends in the dark.
I looked up.
Strafa was way up there, watching the whole neighborhood. Her clothes faded into the background overcast. She was hard to spot.
Singe gagged.
'What?'
'They opened something in there. I have to move back. It's too much.' She headed toward the coaches. Most of the ratmen were doing the same. John Stretch went a few seconds after Singe. 'It's too foul.'
Too foul for a rat?
I smelled it. It was everything that had been there before, but a hundred times worse.
Guards stumbled out of the nearest doorway, desperate for clean air. One headed toward Block. He had thrown up on himself.
Block asked, 'Is it really that bad?'
'Worse than you can imagine, sir. Way worse.' He threw up again.
I said, 'I suggest we don't send anybody in that we don't have to.'
Morley, using a stick for a cane, asked, 'Remember the smell when we raided that vampire nest?'
'Yeah. This may be worse.'
Ten minutes later a pair of red tops emerged with a limp figure between them. The man screamed when they brought him into the light.
'More stuff like that nest,' Morley said.
There wasn't much light for those of us used to the surface world. The overcast was growing heavier. It would rain again soon.
The Windwalker plunged like a striking hawk. A bolt of actinic light preceded her.
104
I started to yell at Block. That wasn't necessary. He grabbed able bodies and headed out. I told Morley, 'I'll be right back.'
'Take your time. I'll be here.'
Strike point for the Windwalker's bolt was two blocks away. I was winded when I joined the circle. The Windwalker remained upright, right foot planted on the throat of the woman in black. The latter wore a silver wig and was at her absolute peak of perfection, fully recovered from my brutality. She was singed and had a bad case of the shakes.
The Windwalker growled, 'Can't any of you stop staring at her tits long enough to do something useful?'
I have mentioned how good the woman looked going away. With her top torn open the full frontal view was even more striking.
I rolled her over. That helped. The red tops bound her hands behind her and hobbled her. Relway took her wig. That helped some more.
The Windwalker said, 'Stuff her into a gunnysack if that's what it takes.' She stepped close to me, shut down the Windwalker some and hit me with a minor dose of her own magic. 'You did good. I'm proud of you. You might find a little something special in your bed tonight.'
A big racket broke out back whence we had come. The Windwalker reestablished herself. She floated upward. 'Yeah! I am so ready for this.' She shot that direction, did a loop and plunged. I charged after her, huffing and puffing. She swooped and darted like a smaller bird harassing a raider raven.
Something below her screamed and screamed.
Morley's mention of the vampire nest reminded me that I had heard that kind of scream before. It was rooted in the agony of knowing that immortality had been betrayed.
Tentacles whipped at the Windwalker. She dodged them easily.
Coming into the last hundred fifty feet of my run I saw that the monster had only two tentacles free to fend off an aerial attacker. The rest all had hold of people, the most notable of who was Morley. Several men threw things ineffectively. Nobody had come prepared to deal with this. But it could not flee while in squid form.
I was fifty feet away, lungs afire, wishing I'd had the stones to bring something lethal to the fight. The Windwalker made a quick run.
She pelted the beast with precisely delivered handfuls of rock salt.
It stopped trying to fight. It began to shudder, to shake. It turned loose of Morley and the others. I got in close, grabbed Sarge's arms, and started dragging. Other guys got hold of other victims, some of who had gotten thoroughly squeezed.
The Windwalker dropped down beside me. She turned into Strafa Algarda again. She was not breathing as hard as I was. 'I ran out of salt!' She was exasperated.
'But you had enough.'
She slipped her right hand into my left hand and pulled me forward.
The monster ripped through one final, violent, screaming convulsion, followed by a bizarre, noisy death rattle. It relaxed into the Nathan of the Bird's portrait, only looking as he might have at twenty, improved by a vast suite of cosmetic enhancements.
This was the male equivalent of the sweet thing in black leather-except for proportional wounds where its alternate form had been showered with salt.
Block caught up. He clamped his right hand on my left shoulder, facing me, while he fought for wind. 'We got 'em. Finally.'
'Not all of them. Not yet.'
Morley stumbled over and hung on to Block. He could not take his eyes off our prisoner. 'I remember most of it.' He pointed at Nathan, who was getting the hog-tie treatment despite his poor health. 'Him. He was the one who locked me up down there. I think because I saw them bringing prisoners off a barge over there.' At which point he became completely confused.
I asked the question that was troubling him. 'What were you doing here in the middle of the night?'
'I don't remember.' But he did before he finished saying that. And it was something he dared not discuss with Westman Block close by.
