All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [297]
She played her flashlight beam over the cinder blocks of the intersection. Mats of slick algae covered everything, hanging down from the ceiling like boogery stalactites. She imagined herself slipping on the stuff and going headfirst into the slimy water.
Sarah came down next and then Eliot.
Eliot plucked a note and it echoed down a single passage only. “That way.”
Sarah tested her foot on the ledge. “Hang on.” She knelt and touched the concrete ledge. The cinder blocks shifted; a ripple in the stone spread outward and raised into a waffle pattern. “A bit of traction, courtesy of Covington conjuration.”
“Thanks,” Fiona murmured, and plodded ahead.
No rats this time . . . although Fiona almost wished there were. She spotted a pile of algae-covered rodent bones. Ick.
They spiraled down, and the water gurgled faster in the channel next to them. Cinder block was replaced by ancient brick and rusted supports, and the air was thick with humidity and the scent of blood.
Ahead was the chamber they were looking for. It was bigger than Fiona recalled, half a block wide with three holes in the roof where sunlight filtered through from the surface. The room was flooded; in the center of this lake was an island of bones—all chewed and broken.
Sitting upon the island was Sobek, oracle crocodile, the once–Egyptian god of the passages to the Underworld.
It had been their first heroic trial to “vanquish” the forty-foot-long reptilian beast that lived in the Del Sombra sewers. It was all part of some weird urban legend about alligators flushed down toilets that Fiona had never understood.
A year ago, Sobek could have easily killed them. It had even pinned Fiona to the ground and opened its maw as if to devour her . . . and she’d gotten a look into the black oblivion inside the creature. It had been injured, however—a spike driven through its shoulder, and they had made friends with it by pulling the thing out.
She and Eliot had been weak and naïve then, and survived only because the crocodile had been convinced by his prophetic powers that they were going to kill it.
Maybe it hadn’t been wrong. She and Eliot were young gods now, tested in battle.
Everything had changed.
But so had Sobek.
Its body was as big as an eighteen-wheel semitruck, and its thick tail sinewed about the island of bones. Its armored scales were glossy ebon black flecked with green and gold.
A pair of slitted eyes opened and stared.
Fiona’s stomach sank. It was like something she might’ve seen in a science book on the Permian period, something that lived before even the dinosaurs . . . something primeval, instinctively cunning, and utterly savage.
There was a pull from the creature, and she felt her feet involuntarily shuffle forward through the water.
Eliot set his hand on Lady Dawn strings and the light vibration snapped her out of the reptile’s hypnotic sway.
Sarah, who had put on a brave face all the way down here, now stood locked with terror.
“Stay here,” Fiona whispered to her.
Sarah gave a nod, and remained frozen in place.71
Fiona and Eliot waded through the water to Sobek.
Its tail uncurled, slid into the murky pool, and swished with irritation. “You have returned too early,” he told them with a voice so resonant that it shook Fiona’s bones and made ripples dance on the water.
“Only—” Fiona’s voice broke.
Sobek had told them to return in a year . . . when he’d answer questions for them. A year in which the crocodile had said it needed to eat and replenish his strength. Fiona had thought that exaggeration at the time, but looking at the jumble of bones and its increased mass . . . she wondered.
She cleared her throat and tried again. “Only twenty-six days until the year is up,” she managed.
“We need to know what’s going to happen,” Eliot added.
A snort exploded through the reptile’s snout. “I have foreseen your early return. So I’m here. And ready. Come closer.”
Fiona swallowed and moved