The Deavys (27 page)

Rose exploded. “Nasty thing! Nasty, filthy thing!”

“Wicked creature,” Amber added. “Better you should have stayed beneath the ground and not soiled the surface with your presence.”

“Impious offshoot of an honorable race.” Her voice having suddenly deepened so that she sounded considerably older than her twelve years, N/Ice was raising her arms in the direction of their adversary. “Hie back to the depths that shelter you! Return to the foulness in which you lie!”

White light erupted from the fingertips of the hand that was not holding the tiny flashlight. For a long instant, the vast stone chamber was illuminated as if by a hundred strobe lights. For an extended moment in time, everything within—priceless trash heap, moss, water, Crub, ools, rats, other servants of the master, and Deavys—was outlined in stark black and white. The rats and ferrets and snakes hissed in collective dread while the ools curled in upon themselves like worms exposed to bright sunshine. Even Simwan had to turn away from the radiance.

It struck the Crub foursquare on his chest, between his front legs. The force of the light blasted aside the thick fur there as if the spot had been struck by a bullet and washed over the chunky rodent shape like the shampoo electric.

The last of the light clung to the tip of the Crub's tail as if reluctant to let go. With a diffident glance and a sharp flick of that naked appendage, it was sent flying harmlessly into the darkness. Blood eyes turned back to the watching Deavys. Wild rat-jaws creased upward in a carnivorous smirk.

“I am not bothered by white light. I am not affected by insults. I am not even,” he added with obvious relish as he locked eyes with Simwan, “troubled by would-be witches and sorcerers. I thrive on such diversions. I welcome whatever attacks you can mount. They only make me stronger.” He began to advance toward the youngsters: slowly, deliberately, unhurriedly. “Violence stiffens my resolve, as your spines will stiffen in death. I will indulge my teeth in the soft parts of your bodies.”

The Crub charged.

The shrieking and squealing and howling that filled the chamber was terrible. Hundreds of ravenous rats and other rodents poured out of all four of the great drains, filling the open space with their cries and screams, their eyes like thousands of points of shifting, darting red light: crimson stars set in a mad, swirling galaxy of horror. The Deavys fell back into the soundest defensive formation they knew: back to back, hands upraised, each of them facing a different point of the compass.

They fought back as fiercely as they were attacked. N/Ice continued to fling the white light of purity in all directions. While the Crub might be too strong, or simply too mean, for it to affect him, it froze rat after other rat in its tracks, turning their fur and faces stark white. Hands crossed at the wrists, Rose barked out the fleeting, terse charms that were her specialty. Lifting half a dozen rats at a time, she utilized words of power and maturity to hurl them against the masonry walls. The ferocious but small bodies smashed into the unyielding stone and, their backs broken, fell to the floor where bodies had already begun to accumulate in piles of bleeding, twitching bone and fur. Amber flung profound enchantments left and right, catching those rats that leaped high and spinning them in such tight circles that they spun themselves into non-existence.

As for Simwan, he made it his task to pick off the ools. They were faster than they looked, slithering forward with their wide sucking mouths agape. Choosing to respond with the simplest bit of applicable magic he could remember, he called forth the chopping spell that his dad had once taught him to use when bringing in winter firewood. Slashing outward and down while alternating both hands, the edges of his palms became extensions of an imaginary ax. Each time he slashed out, an ool died. Chopped in half, or thirds, or little-bitty pieces by Simwan's spell, each black segment continued to writhe and thrash with a horrible lingering half-life long after it had been sliced and diced.

Pithfwid was an ebony tornado. So swift was the Deavy feline, so fast did his lithe form and teeth and claws slash, that the silver stripes with which he had recently invested his fur could not keep up. They kept darting around the roaring chaos that had enveloped the chamber, struggling to catch up to the rest of the cat, streaks of shadow forever fated to remain one step behind the shape that cast them.

With N/Ice flinging light, and Rose lobbing rats, and Amber spinning one rodent and ferret and snake after another into self-consuming oblivion, and Simwan chopping up slinking, stinking ools like they were so many eels in a Danish fish market, the air was full of blood, rat feces, and flying, dismembered rodent bodies. Had all the professional exterminators in the Northeast been brought into play, they could not have accomplished half so much destruction so swiftly, nor with such efficiency. And all the while, Simwan was careful not to jostle the precious bottle that lay tucked in the padded depths of his jacket pocket.

Awash in the carnage of his followers, the Crub hesitated. As ratainer after broken ratainer, ool after oozing ool, chattering mice and moaning voles and fulminating ferrets were flung around and past him to shatter against the walls and ceiling, freeze in their tracks, or compact into nothingness, his ruby eyes bled fury. Already, he had been deprived of the pleasure of watching his prey perish slowly, picked to pieces by his adoring minions. And while his armies continued to pour into the chamber, their numbers were not infinite. Not every rat in New York bowed to the Crub's command. Not every rodent and ground-dweller heeded his orders.

It had been clear from the very beginning that the offspring of humankind who had first pursued him through the forest and onward into the city and now here, to his very secret place itself, were different. Special. Non-Ords. The Crub growled to himself. It was not, after all, so very surprising. It was even, to a certain extent, to be expected. Humans were not the only species to be divided into those who were ordinary and those who were Something More.

Of his kind, the Crub was the pre-eminent example of Something More.

Simwan was the first to see what was happening. He was able to steal a long enough glance to perceive the transformation because the waves of attacking rodents flowing toward him had begun to subside somewhat. Over by the entrance to the conduit that led back to the surface, a greenish glow had appeared and was intensifying even as he stared at it. It expanded and ballooned, obscenely swollen by the thing it cloaked. Reaching out with one hand (and careful to use the back, non-edge generating part of it), he tapped Rose, who was nearest. She alerted Amber, who in turn took a moment to grab N/Ice by the shoulder and give her a warning shake.

“ENOUGH OF THIS! THE TIME FOR CHILDREN'S PLAY IS
ENDED
. THE TIME FOR RENDING IS HERE!”

Enveloped in ichorous, sickly green light, the Crub had contorted and distorted into his full self. To left and right, he was flanked by the similarly transmogrified dozen of his most trusted ratainers, his personal bodyguard. At the sight of these who had been horrifically transformed, even the rodents who were the Crub's allies scrambled frantically to get out of the way.

Simwan was not ashamed to admit that he was frightened. Ferocious rats he could handle. Biting mice and nibbling voles he could deal with. Snapping weasels and striking snakes he could defend himself against. There were spells and enchantments for dealing with such nuisances. But this … this … As the Crub and his horrifically mutated dozen servants began to advance, he saw his sisters continuing to do battle with the rest of the underground army.
He
stayed where he was: in the forefront. Being the big brother, that was the place Providence had designated for him. Swallowing hard, he readied himself to do battle with the likes of that which he had never encountered before, not even in a book.

Holding true to prior proportions, the Crub was still twice the size of the next largest of his closest followers. Only now, the master of the sewers was as big as a bear. A rat the size of a bear. Through the intervention of magic most malign, he had metamorphosed into something much more, and much, much worse, than what he had been before.

Already awful jaws had lengthened and expanded until they now comprised fully a third the length of the Crub's body. The hurried and unnatural growth had spawned massive muscles behind the head and jaw, creating a huge hump just behind the distorted skull. Feet and claws had likewise undergone disproportionate growth, so that they now resembled talon-tipped shovels. Even the Crub's fur had changed, turning from dark brown and semi-silky to a thick, tangled mass of kinked strands that were more like wire than hair. Flanked by his most trusted fighters, he advanced slowly and deliberately toward the eldest Deavy.

Simwan struck out as he backpedaled, but whereas previously his charm-enhanced hands had cut into the foe with comparative ease, now his blows only slid off the thicker, tougher fur and skin of his mutated assailants. A panicky glance behind him showed that he was approaching the north wall of the chamber. Soon, he would be unable to retreat any farther. Though his sisters saw what was happening, their attention was wholly occupied by the hundreds of screaming, squealing, fighting rodents that separated them from their brother. They were too far away, too engaged, too busy to help.

He bumped up against the cold, clammy stone wall. He was out of room, out of options, out of ideas. Out of time. Looming before him, the Crub sensed his prey's helplessness as he lapped up the young man's fear.

“OVER NOW,” the monster rat rumbled ominously. Nearby, his most trusted fellow killers snarled and squealed in anticipation of the rending and tearing that was to come. “YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT BAD ENOUGH ALONE. YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME. NOW, YOU ARE FOOD.” Powerful, perverted muscles tensed as the abomination of Nature bared obscenely distorted jaws and prepared to leap.

“Just a minute, now.
If
you please.”

His back pressed up against the wall, a startled Simwan looked to his left. A pair of mismatched shapes were emerging from a different tunnel than the one he and his sisters had used to access the Crub's lair. One figure straightened while the other did not have to. Surprised beyond measure, Simwan could only gape.

“
Uncle Herkimer?
” His eyes dropped to the second figure. “
Señor Nutt?
”

Wagging his tail as he took the measure of the ongoing battle and continuing rat butchery taking place before him, the tiny dog barely glanced in Simwan's direction as he replied. “No,” he exclaimed tartly. “We're the
other
dead guy and his Chihuahua.”

Uncle Herkimer's hollow yet perceptive eyes focused on the massive, disbelieving shape of the Crub. “My, but you are every bit as disgusting a creature as I supposed. Be a good monstrosity and be off with you, now, to whatever unclean place you dwell within, and leave my nephew and nieces alone.” Broken teeth and cracked lips curved into a genial smile. “They're on holiday, you know.”

Stunned by this casual presumption, the Crub hardly knew how to react. Nor was the abrupt and unexpected appearance of the Deavys' uncle and his dog the last of the surprises in store for the master of the sewers.

From atop a pile of dead and dying rodents rose a questioning shout. “Hie, dog! What are you doing here?”

Craning to see, Señor Nutt replied, “I thought that being a cat, you would obviously need some help.”

“Help? Who needs help?” By way of punctuation, a vole came flying out of the flickering light to land at the Chihuahua's feet, its furry back broken. “But if you've nothing better to do,” Pithfwid went on, “I grow bored with this interminable slaughter. You could, in your small, insignificant way, perhaps help me put an end to it a minute or two sooner.”

“Insignificant?” Señor Nutt puffed himself up, which on the face of it did not result in very much of an expansion. He continued to puff, however, and as he puffed he grew. A cloud of luminous gold sparkles appeared and glittered around him, illuminating the transformation. Bigger and stronger, more and more thickset he became, until when he finally stopped puffing he stood nearly as tall at the shoulder as the crouching Crub. A flabbergasted Simwan recognized what his uncle's pet had become. Not all the books he read were arcane tomes from his parents' library. Others he had perused online, or read in school. Paleontology, for example, was a subject that contrasted nicely with his father's lexicon of real imaginary beasts.

Señor Nutt, the Ur-Chihuahua, had transformed into a dire wolf.

With a snarl that reverberated around the three-story chamber, the newly fashioned agent of canine chaos sprang forward into the line of the Crub's personal bodyguards. The first snap of the monster wolf-dog's powerful jaws nearly bit one in half.

From his location atop an ever-growing knoll of destroyed rats and other creatures, Pithfwid observed the canine metamorphosis. “Hmph. Is that the best you can do? Mere dog stuff.” Taking a deep breath, he similarly began to swell. And swell, and inflate. His paws expanded to the size of hubcaps, the muscles in his shoulders and back grew corded and knotted, tufts of hair appeared at the tips of his ears, and his teeth—his front canines grew and grew and grew until they were six, seven, nine inches long.

There came a roar that loosened some of the mortar holding together the aged, slime-coated building stones and shook dust from the ceiling. Those fighting rodents and snakes and ools who were in a position to witness the dramatic, dynamic, and explosive transformation of the Deavys' cat either collapsed on the spot as fear stopped their hearts, or scrambled desperately to flee. For the first time in their miserable collective lives, they saw something that frightened them even more than the Crub.

Crouching low, tail switching back and forth, bolts of miniature lightning crackling from its toes and tail, the violet-eyed black sabertooth tiger crossed the room in a single jump.