Fade to Black by Francis Knight

Author:Francis Knight
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Fiction / Urban Life, Fiction / Mystery & Detective - Hard Boiled, Fiction / Fantasy - Epic, Fiction / Gothic, Fantasy, Adult, Fiction / Fantasy - Paranormal, Science Fiction
ISBN: 0316217689
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-02-26T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

By the time the cage set us down on firm ground, I was ready to kiss the street, I was so glad to have solidity under me again. No walkway Upside was ever that bad. I might even have done it, if the stink of the place hadn’t warned me. It smelled like shit. Literally.

My stomach rolled over. It hadn’t recovered from the cage yet, and now I was being assaulted by a smell strong enough to make my eyes water. No wonder the street was empty. “Jake, what are we doing here?”

She looked around furtively, as though gathering her bearings, then made her way to a shop with boarded-up windows. “I came down earlier, trying to find out more about the Jorrin brothers and why Azama had them killed.”

“Taking liberties, Erlat said.”

Pasha brought up the rear, his face simian, but he seemed to have recovered from my mental blast.

With a gentle shove, one of the boards came away easily from a window and Jake peered into the darkness beyond. “Ah, yes, but what kind of liberties? Makes a difference.”

Jake stepped over the low sill of the display window and held the board until Pasha and I followed, when she pushed it back into place.

“I don’t see why.”

As the board snicked back into place, total darkness descended, leaving me blind. I reached out and found Pasha’s shoulder.

“Wait a few minutes for your night eyes to come in,” he said. “Look, if they were going against Azama, it would maybe explain why they took your niece. One for themselves, not for him. But if her kidnap was on his orders and it was something else they did that pissed him off, then that’s another matter entirely. How many girls have you seen on the street since you’ve been here?”

I opened my mouth to say, “Loads,” then shut it with a snap. None, that was how many. I’d seen children, but now I came to think about it they were all boys. Not many of those either, compared to the number underfoot Upside.

“They’re running out of children?”

My eyes began to adjust and I could make out a dark blob that was Pasha, another that was Jake and a wall with a darker space in it behind them. We picked a careful path to the doorway.

Pasha went through first. “We can get some light in a minute. Can’t risk it being seen from the street, see. Mind the steps. And yes, I think they’re running out of children. Which still doesn’t answer why your niece in particular.”

I went down three steps into another open space. Pasha shut the door behind us and fumbled about with something on a wall. After a minute or so a light flared, dazzling my eyes so I was blinder than I had been in the dark. I squinted against it until I could see again. A plain, squalid room with a hole in the floor: stairs leading down. Down? I’d thought we were as far down as we could get.

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