“Amazing.”
Pete looked around skeptically. “Ain’t the word I’d use. Rat-hole comes more to mind. And it’s my home.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Janx said. “It’s got some charm. Have to watch your step, though,” he added to Avery.
“I just want to know how it’s possible,” Avery said. “I mean, a town down here.”
“Don’t you know your history?” Pete said. “Muties used to own the coasts, back during the Withdraw. When normal folk moved back, though ...”
“Yes, I remember. Mutants were oppressed and marginalized, isolated to the quarantine quarter and forced to live in squalor, at the constant beck and call of scientists who performed what were, by all accounts, quite unpleasant experiments on them.”
“Yeah. Back then they didn’t know much about Atomic Sea infection. Were even more afraid of it then than they are now.”
“So the mutants fled to the sewers ...”
“A lot of ‘em.”
As the outlaws docked and led Avery and the others over rickety, swaying bridges, then onto more stable platforms and through wide avenues between towering structures, Avery saw a complete society, a civilization, built in darkness and foulness, based on misery and seclusion.
Yet the mutants throve. They danced, they sang, conducted business. Avery saw the shop fronts of seamstresses, carpenters, ferrymen, grocers, a school, even a detective agency—his mind fired at that one—and more. Much more. He passed brothels built of mud and brick and wood, second story windows glowing with life and roaring with sound, naked mutant women lounging on terraces, entertaining men in a lobby adorned with expensive rugs and chandeliers. Ragged, unhealthy-looking mutants squatted in alleys, drinking and forlorn. A group of youths tore down a street, clutching a burlap bag whose blood-soaked sides might indicate a haul of rats or flails, while an outraged adult chased them. Giggling, they floundered down an alley and disappeared.
It was an entirely different universe from the one in which Avery had lived his entire life. It was alien yet familiar, patterned after the one in which he hailed from, yet completely and fundamentally different.
He turned to study Layanna. She had been grimacing and rubbing her temples earlier, but she was more relaxed now.
Seeing his scrutiny, she said, “I can no longer feel the psychic. We’re safe here. I think it worked.”
“Thank goodness.”
Pete led them toward a grand edifice of stone, and Avery imagined it must be supported on stone pillars that ran to the very bottom of the cistern. This was an important building. And old, surely. Sound and light blazed from it, and Avery saw a faded sign that read VASSAS’S HOUSE OF PLEASURE over the batwing doors.
Pete strode past the guards and shoved through the batwings, leading the way into a wide, smoky room, clinking and tingling to the sound of gambling machines. They passed banks of slot machines, a roulette table, a poker table, and more, all of them fully occupied by mutants—and even the occasional non-infected human, perhaps outcasts from the city above. The customers shouted, sweated and drank. Half-naked female mutants (and a couple of males) sauntered through the aisles, across the expensive rugs, holding trays of beer mugs, peanuts and snacks with tentacles, pincers, mottled hands. Some wore even less than others, and these teased the men, sprawled in their laps, kissed their ears or ear holes, and occasionally led them upstairs to what must be the brothel. Avery saw two mutants fighting, rolling about on the floor while onlookers cheered. A bouncer dragged another man from his table and, screaming, toward a back room; perhaps he had been caught cheating and was going to be taught a (surely terrible) lesson.
Accompanying this group was a mutant that could only be Vassas, judging from the deference everyone else showed him. Flanked by two large men, he was scaled and slimy, with huge, protruding eyes. A cigar jutted from his wide mouth. Slime soaked through his expensive gray suit in patches, especially his chest and arm-pits.
Noticing Pete, he stopped and said, “Welcome back, Pete-me-boy. You can fill me in later. Gotta gouge a little sense into this stupid bastard first.” He indicated the man being hauled off, and by the glint in his eyes Vassas was looking forward to it.
“Well, ya see, Boss—” Pete started.
Hildra shoved him aside. “We need a room.”
Vassas’s eyes widened. “You!”
For a moment, he tensed, and so did she. Avery sensed some old animosity, perhaps some bad blood, or bad debts anyway, but then something seemed to go out of Vassas, and a weariness came over him. He had enough problems without this, Avery could practically read his body language.
“Fine,” he said. “But your rates are double.”
While his men dragged the cheater into the backrooms, Vassas invited Hildra and her companions for a quick drink in a corner booth.
“Let ‘em soften him up for me,” he said, throwing back a shot of vodka. “Still, I need to make this quick. What’re you in town for, Hildy? Janx?” He seemed to know Janx as well as Hildra, and have some respect for him.
“We’re layin’ low,” Hildra said, taking a shot. Grimacing, she added, “Bad times up top.”
“Yeah. Right.” Vassas poured himself a refill from the bottle he’d brought to the table. “What else?”
“Guy named Jeffers,” Janx said. “A boatman. Heard of him?”
Something dark passed across Vassas’s face. “Uh-huh. He stays here in town, sometimes. He was the one brought me the body. Gods, but I’ve never seen such a messed up corpse, and I’ve seen my share. It was so bad I had a contact of mine drop it off at the morgue up top. Thought they could make better sense of it than I could, maybe give me some idea how to deal with what did it.” He started to say something else, then heard an abbreviated scream from the backroom. “Looks like I’m missing the fun. Anyway, I’ll have Jeffers found for you. He can tell you all about it.”
* * *
“I don’t like this,” Avery said. Gazing out over the lights on the water, he sipped a thick, strangely flavored liqueur. “I don’t trust Vassas.”
“No reason you should,” said Janx, sprawled out on a nearby couch; Vassas had given them a room on the second floor, and from nearby came the sounds of lovemaking, if it could be called that. “He’s not trustworthy.”
“He’s a fuckwad,” Hildra said.
“How do you know him, anyway?” Avery said.
She shrugged. “I was a burglar. He knew lots of places to be burgaled. Plus, he served as fence. We made a good team, for awhile. Till a few deals went wrong. He blamed me. I blamed him. Neither trusted the other after that. If he hadn’t known Janx was lookin’ out for me, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“I do,” Janx said. “Trust me. He says he wouldn’t hit a woman, but that ain’t the truth. Not by a long shot.”
“I didn’t know you knew Vassas, too,” Avery said. “I was surprised when he knew your name.”
“Janx knows everyone,” Hildra said, not without a touch of pride.
“Don’t worry,” the big man said. “Vassas is a rotter, but he’s loyal, and he likes the idea of both me and Hildy owin’ him a favor.”
“Will he be able to find Jeffers?”
“He should. The Prime Hubbie said Gwen tracked him to Muscud, and this is Vassas’s town. If he’s here, Vassas will find him.”
“Are you certain about this?” Layanna asked Avery.
“It’s the only way. The other Collossum apparently lives down here, and Haggarty, it seems, is about to turn the country over to it. If we can find it and kill it first, Haggarty won’t be able to.”
“I won’t be able to go with you,” she warned. “The Collossum would sense me coming and be on guard. And since he, to pick a pronoun, is here alone it’s almost certain that he’s more powerful than I am, anyway.”
Avery let out a breath. “I know.” He patted the pocket where he kept the god-killing knife. Bleakly, he said, “I might finally get a chance to use this.”
Someone knocked on the door, and Pete stuck his head in. “We found that boatman at a nearby whorehouse.”
“Figures,” Hildra said.
