Vanished

CHAPTER 46

It was already six o’clock by the time we returned with a two-man plastic canoe we’d bought from a boathouse near Regent’s Park Zoo. I only wished we’d been able to find one sooner, as we now had just over two hours before sunset and our plan only worked if we could reach Will before then.

I’d left my bag at the Morning Glory and now packed the contents of my pockets into a couple of zip-top plastic bags. Then I helped Marsden open the sewer access and slip the boat in. Once we had the skinny vessel down the manhole, I was glad we’d gone for the tippy little boat and its stumpy paddles: the headroom in the brick vault of the lost river was too low for the long pole of a kayak paddle to have fit. The rain had stopped, but the river was halfway up the curving sides.

“Water’s a bit swifter than what I’d expected, but we’ll do well enough. At least we shan’t be wadin’ in muck all the way to Clerkenwell.”

“Wonderful,” I muttered, hoping we’d get downstream before the vampires woke up. The rain had another compensation, though: The freshwater from the north was diluting the glutinous sludge the City of London poured into its ancient sewer, and the smell, while unpleasant, wasn’t overwhelming.

As I scrambled around, getting into the canoe without ending up in the water, Marsden lashed a waterproof flashlight to the front post through the mooring ring. It wasn’t much light, but it would have to do.

“Why do I have the feeling you’ve done this before?” I asked in a whisper as we paddled along the dark waters of the hidden Fleet.

“How’d y’think I ended up in the House of Detention, girl?” Marsden muttered back.

“You said the Pharaohn set you up.”

“Fer the nick, not fer the thievin’. Not like I’d never done it afore; I’d just not been caught. If you were desperate enough, you could go right up the drains in some o’ the fine houses, skinny as I am. And I were bloody desperate. I suppose I could have got a regular job as a flusher—that’s them as clears the sewers—but I was already half-mad by then and even the Board of Works wouldn’t take on a fella who sees haunts and monsters.”

“You told me you were a mole catcher.”

“So I was, but I’ve done whatever would turn a coin at times and not all of it’s been clean nor kind.”

My stomach rolled a little with the stink of the stream and at the ideas that rose with his words, so I didn’t notice the rocking of our little boat or the odd ripples on the black water until something exploded from the river.

Pale webbed hands with long, spatulate fingers sporting black spinelike claws grabbed at me as a gurgling scream of rage echoed through the tunnel: “Die!”

I slapped at the hands with my paddle, but they only moved to clutch the side of the boat and jerk downward. Then they shoved upward, spilling us out of the canoe and into the rank waters of the Fleet.

I couldn’t see in the churned-up water and I kept my mouth and eyes shut tight against the filth, thrashing to keep my head above the chest-high surface of the moving water and gasp for air. I broke the surface for a moment and, in the bobbling illumination from the canoe’s makeshift headlight, I spotted a steel ladder rung in the wall. I struggled toward it.

Marsden had climbed onto the overturned canoe, clutching his paddle. “What the hell—?”

“Don’t know,” I gasped, grabbing for the rung.

Sharp points dug into my leg and something tried to drag me below the water again. I caught a flash of needle teeth and luminous eyes as wide as saucers below the surface. I swore and kicked off the bottom harder, snatching at the rung in desperation.

“Jakob!” I shouted. A thread of horror spawned in the back of my mind: Jakob wouldn’t be on the loose in the sewer unless Purcell was truly dead. I felt a sting of remorse for the vampire who’d sacrificed himself.

“River spawn. Bloody hell!” Marsden swore, smacking at a pair of hands on impossibly long, spindly arms that reached for him from below the canoe.

There were only two of them and smaller than us, to boot, but they were quick as fish in the water and we’d only been lucky to get to the surface again at all. I didn’t doubt that they’d pull us down and hold us till we drowned in the sewage if they got a good hold of either of us. I shoved my left arm through the rung and bent my elbow to hang on. I kicked viciously into the place I’d seen the eyes while hoping to find a purchase on a submerged rung for my feet. I’d lost my paddle when the boat turned turtle, so I had no tools but a bagged cell phone and my father’s puzzle; it was a fine lock pick for Grey doors, but I doubted that was going to help this time.

Marsden was still battling the reaching hands from the back of the canoe, but he called out, “They’re fast, but they’re fragile as eggshells—go for the gills if you can or break their nasty arms, and they’ll give up soon enough! And they don’t care for light or cats!”

“I don’t see any cats down here!” I shouted back.

Jakob lunged out of the water, hissing, and slashed at my eyes. I jerked back, pulling up one foot to boot him in the face. He twitched aside and my waterlogged shoe connected with the side of his head. By blind luck, my water-heavy foot slid down his slimy skin and jammed against the gill slits beneath his jaw. The feeling of my toe sinking into the delicate structure was sickening. Repelled, I whipped away and felt the tissues rip apart like wet cardboard.

Jakob let out a terrible gurgle and blood gushed from the hole in his neck. He made one more swipe at me, his glowing eyes glaring malice, and fell back into the water, bubbling and thrashing. He was drowning and I stared in horror as he writhed.

In the bobbing, shivering light from the flashlight, I saw the other river spawn leave off snatching at Marsden to dart through the water to Jakob. But it didn’t try to help him; it sank its claws into the injured monster and held the struggling creature fast while it bit into the bleeding flesh of its neck.

In my Grey core I could feel echoes of his distress and pain. Feel the life rushing out of his body on the tide of his blood. I had never been so close to something living as it died before. Just the shock in a shadow of someone’s death hurt, but this. I gagged and flung myself away from the sight, falling into the stream of filthy water as I tried not to vomit. Marsden grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the canoe.

Chest deep in the sewage and ice water of the Fleet, he flipped the canoe right way up and heaved me into it. Then he flung his paddle and himself back in and pushed us away from the bubbling, thrashing sounds of Jakob’s death. I hung my head over the side and threw up, heaving until my gut ached.

My gods, I’d killed something. A living thing—not a ghost or a zombie, not a thing already dead and needing to be let go—but a living, thinking creature. The shock of death was bad enough, but I had never killed anything before, never ended its existence like pinching out a candle—nothing alive, at least—and I hadn’t thought I ever would. Ghosts and vampires were different—they weren’t really alive and they didn’t send out the wrenching shock of death. Jakob hadn’t been a human, but. he had been alive. He hated me and wanted me dead—it was self-defense! — but I couldn’t stop retching, knowing I’d killed him.

In a few minutes I noticed we were no longer moving. I raised my head and saw Marsden squatting on a narrow ledge nearby, holding the canoe’s mooring lines.

“Done?” he asked.

“I think so,” I choked, my throat raw from heaving up the contents of my stomach. I wanted to rinse my mouth but there was no clean water and I didn’t dare to even wipe my lips on my sleeve, soaked as it was in the disease-infested tide of Fleet Ditch.

“Y’mustn’t take it on yourself like that. He’d have done you worse, if he had the chance.”

I croaked and spat.

“Horrible as it was,” Marsden continued, his voice low and vehement, “the other one did him a favor. Killed him quick. I should have remembered as they were cannibal. If they’d got you, they’d have ripped into you as you drowned and taken pleasure in your bubbling screams. They’d have plucked out your eyes and saved ’em as treasures. Unpleasant, grudge-carrying fiends, the river spawn. Legend says they’re the bastard get of sirens and fae lords, cast out for their ugliness and hateful toward the whole world because of it. The stories say they devour children and drown sailors in the Thames for the shiny baubles they make of their bones. Right lucky you were.”

I didn’t feel lucky; I felt wretched and damned and sickened. It wasn’t logical or reasonable, but the feel of something. dying by my hand, not just falling apart, disturbed me deeply.

Marsden turned his head back and forth, as if listening for something I was missing.

“They’re gone. The other one must’ve swum away—we’re no business of his. We’d best get on. Before the vampires wake and decide to torture your friend a bit.”

For a moment I didn’t move, and Marsden growled in his throat. “C’mon, girl! You’ve more bottle than this! Get up!” He kicked my leg ungently.

“Bastard,” I muttered.

“Bloody well right. Off your jacksy, girl.”

“What?” I questioned, sitting up, stung, annoyed, and generally pissed off now. Have I mentioned that I don’t do self-pity as well as I do anger?

“I said get off your arse and do the job. You want that young man back, you’ll have to go fetch ’im and time is short.”