'Either that or he thinks he'll eat me alive,' I replied. 'Regardless, he called from a payphone and won't pick up when I call back. And my so-called boooyfriend was no help either-Wulf bailed out of his lair. Neither of us can find him. If he doesn't call me-I'm shit out of luck.'
Cinnamon suddenly yawned and stretched, then sat sideways in her seat so her head rested on the glass, feet kicking out over the end of the double bench. She inspected her claws lazily, and said: 'If only you knew someone who was, like, the bestest at tracking people.'
For one brief moment I wondered about the wisdom of involving a minor in this horrible mess-and then I told myself: hey, At least she's bulletproof.
'So, Cinnamon,' I said, leaning back so my head mirrored hers. 'Wanna go for a ride?'
34. Lure of the Wulf
'This is a bad fucking idea,' I said, having severe second thoughts as I pulled at the grimy door to the stairwell leading to the lower levels. 'Why'd I let you talk me into this?'
'Don't lie, you were gonna ask,' Cinnamon countered. 'I just spat it first.'
Going back to the Krog tunnel in the darkness had given me the shakes-I kept imagining Transomnia or werewolves or whatevers were going to jump out at us at every moment. But Cinnamon just swaggered through, all the way from the well at Wylie down through the sewer tunnels, tail switching, long, clawed hands at the ready. But when I pried open the door to the stairwell, even she quailed.
'Wheeew-stinks, I won't lie to ya,' she said, turning her head, though for me the garbage we'd just crawled over coming out of the well had smelled ten times worse. 'Rot and rats and weres and… vamps and… other things.' She stared back into the darkness, and then looked at me. Her irises had widened to huge, eerie ovals, making her seem alien-but her voice was still Cinnamon. 'Not too late to find out you're a were-chicken, is it?'
'And you?'
'I'm a weretiger,' she said proudly. 'I soaks bullets up like sugah. Not scared of nuthin. But if you chicken out, naturally I'd go with ya- like, to protect you, o'course.'
'O'course,' I said, turning on my Brinkman five-cell. 'Lets-'
She reached out with her impossibly long, clawed fingers and snapped the flashlight off. 'Save the bats on your club,' she said. 'Your eyes will adjust. Just stay behind me, K?'
'K,' I said in resignation, following her down into the dark.
In the blackness, the journey down the stairwell was even scarier than it had been with Spleen and his yellow fluorescent. The cinderblock shaft faded into the darkness until it was just a rough presence around us, a grimy touch that occasionally brushed my shoulder as I bumped down the narrow switchbacks.
'For the love, keep quiet,' she hissed. 'Clumping like a cow.'
I pulled out my cell phone and thumbed the screen twice, creating a ghostly nightlight that gave me enough to see the floor. She was right, my eyes were adjusting, but there was just no light at all here for me to pick up. Finally we got to the bottom of the stairs and exited into the wider, vaulted tunnel where Spleen had first taken me to see Wulf.
'Great,' Cinnamon said sarcastically. 'Doesn't think to mention I'll hafta track through water. By the way, could you tattoo my name on my pet jellyfish? Thanks.'
'Don't think so,' I said, shining the light around. 'They only have one outer cell layer.'
'Zactly,' she said.
I stared at her. 'That's pretty smart for an illiterate uneducated werecat.'
'One of the house weres is a librarian,' she said. 'She's been sneaking me audiobooks.'
'Fast,' I said.
'Whatever. You looking for that?'
She pointed, and I turned to see the boat. 'Yes. We'll take it to the landing where I last saw Wulf-and then you take over.'
'Okay, DaKOta,' she said, in the same singsong voice, but quieter than normal. She kept looking around the tunnel abruptly, twitching her nose and tail, as if she was hearing things. When I asked, she shrugged it off. 'Just night noises. Fuck! Let's get this over with.'
We boarded the boat, and I rowed us awkwardly out into the tunnels. I'd forgotten how much a maze they were. We had to go through at least half a dozen turns, each tunnel getting smaller and narrower and older. Glowing phosphorescent mold curved over the walls, and occasional runes provided weak light, but it was very difficult to see. Every once in a while a surge of air washed back over us, confusing Cinnamon's nose until she admitted she was completely turned around. I was growing more and more confused myself-my memory of the waymarks Spleen had used grew fuzzier until I started to fear we were lost.
'It's the fucking House of Leaves down here,' I said, flashing my light into the bottom of the boat like Cinnamon taught me, so the beam wouldn't kill our night vision.
'What?' she asked, eyes tracing over the ancient masonry.
'Sorry,' I said. 'I doubt that one's coming to audiobook.'
'Whatever. This shit supposed to be from the Civil War?' Cinnamon said. 'No ways they built all this just for the fucking Civil War. It was over in, like, five years-'
'Don't know much about history,' I said, 'but maybe they built it after that.'
'Shit this old?' she said. 'You believes that?'
'I have no fucking idea,' I replied. 'I just think we're lost-'
And then the tunnel abruptly widened up, into a vast, dungeonlike vault built from huge, rough-hewn blocks of stone. Only now could I see that Cinnamon was right: No way was this Civil War architecture. .. this was something far older, far more primal. When I'd first seen these runes and waymarks I'd meant to read up on them, but life since I'd taken Wulf s assignment had been so insane I'd had no time-so I still couldn't decipher the marks in the rock around us. All I knew was that the ones painted on it were old… and the ones scratched into it, older.
'We met here,' I said, pointing to the landing upon which Wulf had stood.
'This is a… neutral place,' Cinnamon said, flicking her ear. 'But not a safe one. You be meeting here, not living here. His den will be somewhere else.'
I pulled up to the landing and tied the boat off. 'Hopefully in walking distance.'
The air surged around us, like the tunnels were taking a breath. It was oddly regular, like we were crawling around the throat of some monster, feeling the rhythm of its lungs.
'Fuck,' Cinnamon said, looking around wildly. 'What is doin' that? I mean, fuck! Let's get this over with.'
Rough stone steps climbed up from the landing, and we followed them to a high ledge overlooking the docking chamber below. A bare stone corridor tracked off in either direction, but Cinnamon dismissed them with a sniff, taking us into narrow slots perpendicular to the ledge. Here the ancient stonework gave way to merely old brick and well-rusted steel; now it did feel like we were working our way through the foundation of some Civil War era structure.
'This is it,' she said. 'Smells like a den.'
'Is he here?' I said. 'Wolves are territorial, right? I don't want to barge in-'
'Relax,' she said, moving forward cautiously. 'I wouldn't take ya into a live den. All the smells are old, and I don't hear nothing, so-'
The air shifted again, hot breath drawn in to the throat of the unseen 'monster' behind us.
'Homina,' she said, breathing in deeply. 'Does he looks as good as he smells?'
'Better,' I said, following her as she picked up the pace.
'How come you gets all the good boyfriends?' she complained, worming her way through the narrow tunnel. 'You don't even like 'em!'
'I'm an outgoing, attractive woman with a job that lets me meet a lot of people,' I said, 'and I do too like boys. I just like girls too.'
And then the wind shifted, the hot breath of the monster now wafting towards us.
'Fuck,' Cinnamon said, whirling. 'I was wrong. He's here.'
