The other cops, however, hadn’t fared so well. No one vomited, but their movements weren’t as assured as they’d been in the fresh air. I caught up with Mez and tried to hand him the menthol. He smiled and shook his head. “Already ahead of you.” He pulled nose plugs from his nostrils. “They’re filled with menthol and I took a tincture of ginger before I came.”
I shook my head at him. He really was good.
“Hand that shit over,” Shadi said, grabbing the tube from me. “Damn!” She didn’t look upset as much as angry that her concentration was being compromised. But once she squirted the spray, she threw it back at me and didn’t mention the stench again.
Only seasoned officers could handle this kind of vulgar scene. When I’d run into my first putrefied body years earlier, I’d puked until I felt as if I’d left my stomach lining on the pavement. Took me a couple of years before I could be around the sickly sweet scent of death without my stomach’s revolting. It’s not that I didn’t still smell it, just that my body had lost that self-protective instinct to avoid rot and decay. So, like my grim-faced team, I put my disgust on the back burner and moved forward into the dark, yawning mouth of the Arteries.
I pulled a glow rod from my belt. Unlike a flashlight that would take up a valuable hand, this could be attached by a carabiner to my belt loop and provide a large halo of light around the immediate area. Unfortunately it would also make a very large target for the fiends, but since they tended to avoid bright lights, they’d give us a wide berth.
Once we reached the bottom of the staircase to the main tunnel, the light revealed the dump that the tunnels had become. A repository for used condoms, empty potion vials, dead rodents, and discarded self-respect. A fucking still life depicting the most savage sides of humanity.
“Charming.” Morales kicked aside a discarded baby carriage filled with doll parts and hypodermic needles.
“Which way?” Diesel asked.
“Through this area, there’s a clearing with a four-way fork.” Even though I was speaking in a low voice, my words echoed off the damp walls. “We’ll probably run into some hexheads, so be ready.”
I used my free hand to scratch the patch again. Fucking Mez with his “slight burning sensation.” It felt as if the damned thing was eating through my skin. I glanced up at the rest of the team, but everyone’s eyes were too busy scanning the immediate area for threats to pay attention to my moral dilemma. I took two seconds to make the decision.
The industrial adhesive ripped the first couple of layers of skin off, but at least the burning stopped. I dropped the patch without a second thought and moved on. I didn’t need magic patches to deal with Bane—just my wits.
When I looked up, Morales was watching me. I froze. If he called me on taking off the patch, Gardner and everyone else listening in would hear. But he surprised me by tilting his chin down to acknowledge he wouldn’t rat on me. It made me uncomfortable, though, for him to have something to hold over my head.
Once we passed through into the platform with four forks, our lights flashed off flailing limbs as junkies scattered like cockroaches. I hurdled over an overturned grocery cart and tackled a male who was running deeper into the tunnels. My body slammed into his and he came down hard on the concrete, breaking my fall. “MEA! Hands where I can see them.”
He went limp. Scabs covered his arms and he stunk of shit. Suddenly glad I’d worn gloves, I made quick work of cuffing him with a zip tie. Once he was secure, I dragged him over to a wall where the others were lining up those they’d collared. “Stay,” I ordered.
He lowered his head and huddled into himself. It had been so easy, I found myself disappointed. All the adrenaline pulsing through me demanded action. I turned to find some.
It didn’t take long.
Not ten feet away, Morales and Shadi were grappling with a pack of junkies whose addled brains told them it was a great idea to fight back. I rushed forward, pulling my hawthorn-wood nightstick from my belt.
I arrived just as one of the junkies raised a bat toward Shadi’s exposed back. I stashed the gun and took him out at the knees with the wand. He screamed and crumpled, his hands grasping at his right knee. Before I could follow up, a chick with rotten teeth and wild hair ran at me screaming like a banshee. I smiled and wound up. The stick hit her square in the diaphragm. The air escaped her lungs in a whoosh and her eyes bugged out.
I wasn’t sure what potion she was on, but it totally overrode her pain receptors. She recovered quickly from the lack of oxygen and came up scratching. I grabbed the S&P spray and pressed the button about two inches from her face. She collapsed in a pile of snot, tears, and pitiful mewling.
While I’d been working, Morales managed to take down three junkies of his own. He had them lined up in a neat row of angst. Shadi had bagged one herself—a hulk of a man who looked like a kicked puppy in his cuffs.
A quick scan of that part of the tunnel told me we’d managed to secure the spot. Morales punched the button on his vest. “This is Morales. We got ten tied up near the entrance for processing.”
While he spoke, I got my two cuffed where they lay.
“Good work, Agent Morales,” Gardner responded. “Proceed as we discussed.”
“Roger that.”
Morales turned to the team. “All right, you stay here until backup arrives to collect these guys,” he said to the two patrolmen. “You four take the tunnel to the right,” he said to Diesel and the other three tac wizards. They nodded and started out. “The rest come with me on the left,” he said to Shadi, Mez, and me.
Shadi shot me a smile as we fell in behind Morales. “Fun, right?” she said, sounding as if we were playing paintball instead of raiding the lair of a violent coven.
I realized with a start I was kind of enjoying myself, too. Whatever Mez put in those patches was still working with my adrenaline to improve my stamina. I’d just taken down three perps but I was barely winded. Part of me felt guilty because I shouldn’t have been using a potion to begin with, but another part of me—one long forgotten—was getting off on the feeling of power. It was hard to feel bad with the adrenaline and magic giving me such a buzz. Besides, it wouldn’t last long since I’d removed the damned thing.
“Prospero?” Morales called. “Let’s go!”
Once we entered the mouth of the tunnel, we paused to regroup. “All right,” Morales said to our huddle, “be ready. The Sentinels probably heard us coming and may be waiting to ambush. Mez, get those potion bombs ready.”