Calling On Fire (Book 1) (45 page)

The pins appeared to sprawl randomly.

"Do you have any maps of the sewers?" Esset asked, but the captain shook his head.

"No, why?"

Mr. Esset and his son explained what they'd noticed at the crime scene.

"Hm." The captain stroked his beard as he stared at the map.

"If I'm recalling right, there are sewer access points near all of bodies except this one. The merchant. He was the first." The captain pointed at a red pin.

“Has anyone caught so much as a glimpse of the killer?” Esset asked. The captain shook his head grimly.

“There’s been rumors that it’s an angry ghoul or some such, but…” The captain shrugged. “We’re at a loss.”

A tap sounded at the door, and they all turned to see Guard Harn there.

“I’ve assembled a squad. We’re ready to take a look in the sewers,” he said. He waved for them to follow, already turning to go.

“Good luck,” the captain said.

“Thanks…” Esset wasn’t looking forward to delving into the city’s foul-smelling underbelly, but if that was what it took to find the source of these attacks, that was where he was going.

The stench was so bad that even breathing through his mouth didn’t help. Esset and most of the guards had secured kerchiefs around their mouths and noses. Refuse flowed around their feet, following the slight downhill slope to—Esset didn’t actually know. He wondered where all the waste went for a moment before pulling his attention back to his immediate surroundings.

The liquid and muck covered the toes of their boots, and Esset was glad his had been treated to repel water. One guard wasn’t so lucky, and he was groaning and lifting his feet with rude squelching sounds.

“This is just gro—” The guard was cut off by falling refuse; the pile of feces shot down an overhead chute and splattered against the back of his neck. Snickers echoed around the sewer as the other guards moved closer to the walls, where the refuse couldn’t hit them.

“Quiet,” Guard Harn reminded them in a soft voice, and the snickers and complaints faded.

“It doesn’t look like there’s any surface we could track prints on,” Esset said, his voice soft enough that it wouldn’t echo down the tunnels.

“No,” Guard Harn agreed grimly.

Esset frowned at the liquid muck.

“I was going to summon a wolf, but standing in liquid will force them to banish before I can do any effective scouting,” Esset said quietly to his father. Plus there was nothing around for the wolf to fight, not even one of Toman’s animations. “Too bad Toman’s not here. He could create something to navigate this mess,” Esset murmured.

“A sewer would be a very bad place for healing wounds,” Mr. Esset reminded him, and Esset winced. He hadn’t thought of that.

“I can still summon a bat,” Esset suggested. He’d hoped for the wolf’s keen nose, but the sewer probably would have foiled any scent-tracking anyways.

Guard Harn moved closer to them so he could hear. “Shall we move out?” he asked.

“I might be able to save us a trip through the muck. I can summon a bat that can navigate the tunnels and hopefully spy out our killer, if he’s down here,” Esset said.

“That…would be preferable,” Guard Harn said after a moment.

Esset automatically looked for a place to sit, but he quickly realized he wasn’t going to find one. Somehow, he was going to have to do this standing. “Okay, watch my back,” he said, spreading his feet apart and clasping his hands behind his back to get balanced.

Foregoing speaking the incantation, a little bat materialized in front of Esset and he tried to submerge his consciousness into it. He almost succeeded, but at the last moment, he felt himself falling backwards and jerked back into himself. He didn’t even get as far on his second attempt, but on the third, his mind slipped into his summon and it darted away down the tunnel, along with Esset’s consciousness.

The slimy walls crawled with flames, and the water looked like churning lava. Every time waste came flying down an off-shoot, the bat swerved wildly, even though Esset kept the creature high in the center of the tunnel to avoid it.

The sewer split several times, and Esset mentally marked which way he went each time, backtracking when he went too far to keep from getting lost. He was starting to wonder if he shouldn’t have the group move forward so he could banish and re-summon from scratch, but he wasn’t finding anything at all. With liquid on the floor, there were no tracks to follow, and Esset hadn’t even spotted any irregularities on the walls.

He did see rats swimming in the sewage a number of times, however. Esset had no particular dislike for rats, but he did shudder when he saw them, mostly at the thought of swimming in all that waste. He was backtracking yet again when he saw yet another rat swimming—and then two more. Thinking back, he realized that all of the rats he’d seen had been headed in the same direction. It was only when he’d followed the one branch that he’d seen them—whenever he followed a bystream, he wouldn’t see them anymore, unless they were headed to that one branch. Thinking it odd, Esset started to follow the rats. Maybe they knew something he didn’t.

Something struck Esset’s physical body back with the group, and Esset jolted back to himself to find himself falling. He flailed and his hand slid against the slimy wall, but he caught himself and managed to keep from falling into the sewage.

It was chaos as Esset tried to catch his bearings. Men were shouting and moving, including the man holding the lantern, throwing firelight helter-skelter around the tunnel.

That was when Esset realized that he didn’t see his dad.

Toman stood on the empty hillside, having trudged on foot to the spot. When Mrs. Esset had been busy, he’d snuck out to do something both she and Esset would heartily disapprove of: relocate the castle.

He’d almost said something to Esset about his plan, but then Esset had said what he had about stopping Moloch… Toman pushed that thought away. Esset would say he was still too sick to move the castle, too drained. He would think Toman was being rash. Well, Esset needed to think less sometimes.

Toman felt weary and sore all over, and for a moment—just a moment—he wondered if Esset was right. Then stubborn pride took the fore: he could do this. He had to prove that he could. After all, if he wasn’t getting better, he couldn’t build an arm, and if he couldn’t make a new arm, he couldn’t fight Moloch.

Toman closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, reaching for that particular spot in his mind, that spot right “beside” his animator magic.

Here. Come here,
he thought, and the castle materialized before him. At the same time, Toman felt the energy leave his body in a great rush, like water pouring from a cup tipped over. Black splotches danced across his vision. Just before consciousness left him, he admitted to himself that both he and Esset had been right. He was capable of moving the castle, but it hadn’t been a wise move.

Toman collapsed, unaware than his cheek was pressed up against a muddy little spot on the ground. The door of the castle opened and a stone soldier came out and carried the animator inside.

Esset glanced around frantically, trying to find his father. He felt panic rising when he still didn’t see him, but then a cough came from behind him. Esset whirled around and found his dad on one knee in the sewage. Slime was smeared all over his back, and there were long slashes down the sleeve of his coat.

“Dad!” Esset moved to help his father, but Mr. Esset waved him off, and Esset realized there was only damage done to the coat—no blood or injury.

“Watch out for that thing, son, it might come back,” Mr. Esset said, not looking at Esset but past him, searching the tunnel for signs of whatever had attacked them. Esset immediately began scanning their surroundings too, but he didn’t see anything.

“What was it?” Esset asked.

“Don’t know. Big. Fast,” Mr. Esset replied. He was on his feet now, alert.

“Anyone get a good look at it?” Guard Harn asked the group, but everyone shook their heads. They all had their backs to each other, ready for a second attack…but none came. There was no sound in the tunnels beyond the splash of new waste entering the sewer.

“What happened?” Esset asked once it became clear that whatever had attacked was gone.

“Whatever it was, we barely heard it coming,” Guard Harn said. “There were a couple small splashes, some scratching sounds, and then something
big
came at us out of the darkness. It went straight for you, but your father yanked you out of the way.”

“It took a swipe at you, but it only caught my jacket,” Mr. Esset put in. He looked a little pale, and he fingered the damage to his coat. It would need some serious patching—it was a miracle that the claws hadn’t caught flesh. Esset turned to look at the damage.

“Thanks, Dad.” Esset looked his father in the eye and nodded.

“Of course,” his father replied.

“May I see?” Esset reached out to his father’s sleeve, and Mr. Esset held out his arm. Esset poked his fingers through the rips; they were ragged. Had they been clean, Esset would have suspected knives, not claws, but the ragged tears were consistent with the claw wounds on the dead body he’d seen.

“Well, at least we’ve likely found our killer,” Esset said.

“So it would seem. But what was it?” Guard Harn asked. Esset shook his head.

“If you’ll watch my body again, I’ll take another look. I have an idea where to go this time,” Esset said. All the guards exchanged looks, but Guard Harn nodded.

“Go ahead. If it comes back, we’ll be ready.”

Once again, it took Esset a couple tries to submerge his consciousness into the bat while standing, but soon he was flying down the tunnels again. The bat swooped about, keeping a close eye on the sewage below and pausing to flit in a small circle whenever it caught a glimpse of a rat swimming below. Then it darted ahead until it either reached an intersection or saw another rat. The hunt gained pace the further Esset went—he saw more and more rats, all swimming in the same direction. Esset was just reaching his limit for remembering all the turns and branches he’d taken when he caught sight of something ahead.

The bat’s echolocation bounced off something large and moving quickly. Esset urged the little bat along, but whatever it was seemed to be adept at keeping just ahead of the bat, and Esset couldn’t identify the source of the movement. He didn’t doubt that it was whatever had attacked him earlier.

Esset lost track of the creature before long, and the bat fluttered in a circle before a branching tunnel, chittering angrily. He tried to track it by the splashes it made in the sewage, but the sounds echoed too much and there was too much waste incoming into the sewers to pinpoint which tunnel the creature had gone down. Esset had to choose between two forks; instead of just picking one at random, he waited until he saw a rat and followed it.

The bat darted forward again until another anomaly appeared in the tunnel ahead. This time, the large object didn’t move, so Esset approached more cautiously. Whatever it was, it was larger than the creature he’d chased earlier, and Esset guessed what it was before the bat’s strange senses could confirm it. He’d found the missing bodies.

The little bat flitted closer as Esset tried to determine how many bodies were there. The corpses were piled together, and in the muck, it was difficult to tell which limbs belonged with which body.

Suddenly, something large lunged at the bat, and the last thing Esset saw was a long pair of jaws snapping shut. The bat exploded into a small puff of sparks and ash, and Esset’s consciousness jolted back into his body.

Esset sucked in a massive breath of fetid air as his heart pounded wildly, echoing in his ears. He started to lose his balance, but Mr. Esset braced his shoulders to help him stay upright.

“What did you find?” Guard Harn asked before Esset had caught his breath.

“I found—” Esset sucked in another deep breath. “I found the bodies. And our killer. He ate my summon.” Esset hoped the creature enjoyed its burnt tongue.

“You okay?” Guard Harn asked, looking him up and down.

“Yeah, fine. It was just…jarring,” Esset said. His heart was still calming, but his breathing had returned to normal already.