“I think they’ll check everywhere, in time,” Sanford said. “And I can’t rule out the possibility that they turned someone at your level, Diana, who knows the location of the Threshold of Salt. I don’t want to wait around for them to ransack their way down here.”

  “They’ll find us quickly.” Abel nodded toward the jar. “I can sense the presence of Asterias – I could sense it as soon as I came inside. I’m sure Cain and the comets can, too.”

  “Won’t the vault guardian be able to stop them?” Diana said.

  Sanford shook his head. “Some of them, certainly. But I don’t get the sense Cain values the lives of his underlings much, and if he throws enough of them at the shoggoth, some of them will make it past to the vault. My shoggoth is also young, and not very bright, and capable of being lured away, as I gather Ruby succeeded in doing. On balance, I think we’d better be going.”

  “Going where?” Ruby said. “Back upstairs? Good luck. You fight them, distract them, and we’ll escape with the god in a jar–”

  “Did you really think I’d only have one exit out of the Lodge?” Sanford said. “I have several, in fact, and some of them lead right out of this world… but the Plateau isn’t hospitable this time of year, and I’m not taking an aquatic creature anywhere near the misty Lake – who knows how this fragment of Asterias might quicken in a place like that? No, we’ll take one of my mundane escape routes, which is located… right here.” He knelt by an ornate chest, banded with iron and inlaid with obsidian and silver, a trunk big enough to hide a body inside. He pressed the sides of the trunk, and the lid sprang open. Diana tensed up, half expecting something to leap from the chest, or for Sanford to draw out Excalibur, or Poseidon’s trident, or a flamethrower. He didn’t reach inside, though. Instead he said, “Take the jar for me, would you, Diana?”

  I’ll take it for us, Diana thought. She wasn’t going to let Asterias end up in Sanford’s hands any more than she’d leave it with Cain and his comets. “Of course, master.” She put the jar back in her bag and secured it on her shoulder.

  Sanford gestured to the trunk. “Abel first, I think, since he can sense the presence of at least some of the cult’s members.”

  Abel looked into the trunk, grunted, and then stepped inside – and began to descend, apparently climbing down a concealed ladder. Seeing his head drop below the level of the trunk was like watching a magician do a trick. Ha! The trunk must have a false bottom concealing an escape route. Sanford did love his trickery.

  “Do you think there are comets in the tunnels?” Ruby asked.

  “Unlikely,” Sanford said. “Only a handful of my most trusted associates know about this route, and the cult hasn’t turned any of them – if they had, they wouldn’t have needed to lure me to Cain’s hotel room. They could have taken me unawares at another time. But I didn’t get to be where I am today by taking unnecessary risks, so I don’t intend to take the lead.” He nodded to Ruby. “Down you go. I can’t very well leave you in the vault unattended.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes and stepped into the trunk, descending faster than Abel had. “It smells down here,” her voice wafted up.

  “It gets worse,” Sanford assured her. Then he gave Diana a little bow. “You next, my dear. I’ll bring up the rear, since I know a trick to seal this entrance so no one can follow.”

  It was Diana’s turn to look into the trunk. Sanford had lifted up a hinged false bottom to reveal a set of wooden rungs descending at a slight angle into a tunnel about ten feet down. Ruby and Abel were at the bottom, gazing up. “Part of an old cellar?” she asked.

  “Indeed,” Sanford said. “At least… the first part was. There are lanterns down there. They should have oil in them.”

  Ruby vanished into the dark as Diana made her way down, and by the time she’d descended to the tunnel floor, the thief had lit one lantern and was holding another out to Abel. The room smelled richly of dirt with an undercurrent of rot.

  Sanford came down then, closing the hatch and then standing halfway up the ladder, muttering something. There was a clang, like someone had dropped a cast iron skillet into a galvanized steel tub. “Sealed,” Sanford said with satisfaction. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, Diana saw him tuck a length of red chalk into an inner pocket of his jacket. What other mystical tools did he have secreted about his person? All she had was the pistol in her bag. And a god in a jar. Usually she just had a compact and a handkerchief or two!

  A bubble of unhinged laughter built up in her belly, but she stifled it. How had her life come to this? She’d just wanted to run a shop and live in peace and plenty, and now she was trying to save the world. But there would be no peace for anyone if Cain succeeded. Sometimes the world made demands of you, and you had to answer.

  They were in a rectangular stone room about five feet wide and ten feet long, with the ladder at one end and a metal door at the other. Beside the door there was a wooden crate that held the lanterns, oil, and a handful of crude spears – just lengths of wood with sharpened ends. “What are those for?” Ruby said.

  “Protection,” Sanford said. “French Hill is an interesting place. There’s a whole complex of tunnels underneath here. We thought the caves were natural, at first, until we discovered… dens, you could say. Or lairs. They were full of human remains and gnawed bones. We located a number of passages that led to the graveyard and the mausoleums, and found coffins broken open… from below, their contents spirited away into the tunnels.”

  “What?” Diana said, horrified. “Spirited away by what?”

  “We have a copy of Balfour’s Cultes des Goules in the Seeker’s library,” Sanford said. “You should have read it. This hill was once infested by the… shall we say, American cousins of the creatures that volume describes. There is considerable debate about their origins, whether they’re a cannibalistic subspecies of human, or the result of humans mating with certain other entities, a sort of subterranean counterpart to the denizens of Innsmouth. I incline toward the latter notion. At any rate, ghouls are foul, scrambling things, all teeth and claws and filth, and they feast on corpses. We cleared the tunnels, but in time, the ghouls returned. Some of the passageways go very deep indeed, and not all have been explored. We’ve closed up most of the openings that lead to the surface to discourage them away from this area, and if a ghoul does creep in, it can usually be sent fleeing with a few jabs. I have my sword-stick. You’re welcome to take spears. I wouldn’t advise firing a gun down here.” He looked straight at Diana. “The ghouls dug these tunnels, using their claws as far as we can tell, and as a result the passages aren’t tremendously stable. I’d hate for you to trigger a cave-in.”

  Just what Diana needed: another horrible fate to worry about. She added it to the list and put the list aside. Worry would only slow her down and make her hesitate, and there was no time for hesitation now. “I understand,” she said.

  The other three took spears. “Wonderful,” Sanford said. “Let’s–”

  A booming sound came from above, like metal slamming into metal, and dust sifted down from the ceiling like dry rain. “They’ve made it to the vault already.” Abel stared above him. “God, Cain is right there.”

  “Then let’s be elsewhere,” Diana said, and opened the metal door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Reversal of Fortunes

  Ghouls, Ruby thought. The more she learned about the secret world, the more she wished she’d been content with the known one. She followed Diana into the tunnel, holding her spear in one hand and a lantern in the other. She had to resist the urge to huddle up close to Diana – she’d end up poking the other woman with her spear if she got any closer.

  The tunnel beyond the metal door wasn’t finished at all – it was packed dirt, sometimes with roots poking down from above and in from the sides, and it smelled even more strongly of clay and rotten meat. The stink wasn’t quite enough to make her gag, but it was getting close. The tunnel was round, like it had been created by the passage of an immense earthworm, and just tall enough for her to stand upright. Abel and Sanford would have to stoop.

  “I just discovered that I’m claustrophobic,” Abel said. “It’s funny, I’ve spent plenty of time cramped belowdecks on boats, and that never bothered me much, but somehow having all this earth above me is different. I feel like the air is being crushed out of me.”

  “It’s like a rehearsal for being dead and buried,” Diana said. “Except at least the dead can’t smell.”

  “Sure they can,” Ruby said. “The dead smell terrible.” Only Sanford laughed, which was worse than no one laughing at all.

  The passage didn’t have sharp turns, but it was full of meandering curves, and they passed side passages that had been blocked, some by natural cave-ins, others jammed with chunks of concrete and rocks shored up with lengths of metal – routes the Lodge had sealed, Ruby supposed. They walked, and walked, and walked, and a terrible certainty dawned on Ruby.

  “Sanford, why are we going down?” Was this a trick? Was he luring them to some subterranean lair – to feed them to some horrible entity he owed fealty to?

  “The Lodge is at the top of the hill, Miss Standish,” Sanford said from the back. “We are heading for a point closer to the base on the eastern side, which lets out onto a little plot of undeveloped land I’ve owned for quite some time. We’ll be there soon.”

  Ruby grunted, somewhat mollified.

  A few moments later, Diana stopped. “There is… a foot. On the tunnel floor. A human foot. A… lady’s foot, judging by the polish on the toenails.” Her voice was strangely calm. Ruby moved a little closer to look, and there was indeed a dainty foot in the tunnel, with a shard of bone poking up out of the ankle. She shuddered all over. That used to belong to a person. A person who was dead. A person who was in pieces–

  “Mmm,” Sanford said. “The ghouls don’t usually leave any flesh behind, which means we probably startled one away from its meal. Let’s step up our pace, shall we?”

  “I’ll go first,” Abel said, squeezing by them and pointing his spear forward. Ruby and Diana exchanged a glance, and Ruby rolled her eyes. She didn’t need a man to protect her, but then again, if Abel wanted to put himself in the path of a ghoul, who was she to argue?

  The tunnel widened enough for Ruby and Diana to walk abreast, so they did. They kept their spears up and scanned the environment, side-to-side, but up above, too. Ruby had a particular horror at the idea of something dropping on her from the tunnel’s ceiling.

  When the ghoul appeared, though, it did so from below, squirming out of a crack in the ground. It wriggled out just after Abel passed the crack, its body pale and gangly, its proportions somehow doglike, its face more like a snout. It crouched, shoulder bones jutting out unevenly, its spine crooked and hunched, and leered at them.

  Diana screamed, apparently forgetting all about her spear, because she smashed it across the face with the lantern. The ghoul howled, and Ruby stepped forward and jabbed it with her spear, scratching a bloody line across its pale chest as it twisted away. By then Abel had turned around and jabbed with his spear, and Sanford shouted, “Give it an escape route, you fools! If it can’t run, it will fight!”

  Ruby and Diana flattened themselves against either side of the tunnel, leaving an opening just wide enough for a terrified ghoul to flee from Abel’s jabs.

  And flee it did – straight toward Sanford, who was still taking up the rear. Ruby watched, partly horrified, and partly hopeful. If the ghoul fell upon Sanford… well, he’d already shown them the escape route, so did they really need him anymore? Ruby wasn’t the bloodthirsty sort, but she was pragmatic, and she knew that Sanford would still want revenge on her for her theft. If he fell to the ghoul, it would solve one of Ruby’s big problems.

  But Diana shouted, “Master, look out!” Ruby wondered if the woman was just so caught up in playing the loyal acolyte that she warned Sanford instinctively, or if she simply placed a higher intrinsic value on human life than Ruby did. Probably the latter. In Diana’s position, Ruby would have simply left town when she realized she was part of a monstrous cult, not stayed behind to try to dismantle the organization from the inside. That probably meant Diana was a better person than her. Ruby thought she could live with that.

  “Yes, thank you, Seeker,” Sanford said, and there was the rasp of drawn metal as he liberated his sword from the stick. “You’d best avert your eyes.”

  Ruby didn’t look away – she always liked to see – and so she was blinded when the shaft of the sword lit up as bright as the sun and slashed out at the ghoul, separating its canine head from its body. The sword dulled to a faint glow for a moment and then went dark again, leaving them all to blink in the much deeper darkness.

  “Apologies for the flash,” Sanford said. “I’ve been through a lot today, and didn’t relish the idea of anything like a fair fight in these tunnels. Ghouls aren’t strong individually, but when cornered they can be ferocious, and their bites and scratches have a tendency to become infected. Doubtless because of all their scrabbling about in corpses and mud all day.” Sanford’s voice was calm.

  “You have a magic sword,” Ruby said, the dark blotches in her vision fading.

  “I have magic, if you want to call it that, and a sword,” Sanford replied. The stick rattled as he put it away. “Let’s go before the commotion attracts the dead hound’s relatives.”

  They set off again, Ruby trailing a hand along the side of the tunnel since her vision still wasn’t entirely restored. The tunnel floor leveled out, and then her fingertips brushed what felt like brick.

  “Is this the exit?” Abel called. “It’s locked.”

  Sanford pushed his way past, pausing to cast a sardonic look at Ruby. “Of course it’s locked. Only I can open it. It’s good the ghoul didn’t kill me, hmm? Because I sealed the other end of the tunnel in the same way. You would have had a terrible time down here without me… though not, it occurs to me, for very long.”

  Ruby crowded close to watch Sanford at the door, the twin of the metal hatch they’d entered at the other end of this journey. He pressed his hand against the metal, then drew a bit of chalk from his pocket and sketched a design on the door. After that, Sanford knocked a complicated series of raps, muttered to himself, and yanked the lever down. The door eased open a crack.

  “How much of that was actually necessary to unlock the door, and how much was just misdirection to hide the real process?” Diana asked, and Ruby snorted in approval.

  “Oh, about half and half.” Sanford rubbed the chalk away. “Not that I expect any of you to come this way again, but security is a good habit.” He pulled the door open the rest of the way, the metal creaking. “I keep a car in a garage a few blocks away. We’ll head there, drive out of town, and then figure out what to do with Miss Stanley’s jar. You can leave the lanterns here.”

  Sanford led the way out of the tunnel, and they followed. Beyond the door, the tunnel got smaller, forcing them all to hunch, and soon it became a drainpipe that was barely big enough to crawl through on all fours. Ruby told herself things were just getting worse before they got better. They had to be getting better, right?

  She wondered if the comets were back there in the tunnels, coming after them, contending with ghouls, getting lost in side passages… or pursuing Abel unerringly. No use worrying about it. The only way out was through.

  Sanford went into the narrow pipe first, his cane dragging beside him, but the rest of them discarded their spears along with the lanterns for easier movement. The drainpipe was short, and soon Ruby crawled out, following Diana. There were no streetlights nearby, but the moon was bright enough to outline their surroundings.

  The pipe let them out in the back of an undeveloped lot backed against the hill, the ground fenced in on the three other sides. The lot was filled with weeds and flanked by derelict houses. Not a part of Arkham she’d had cause to visit before; not a part it looked like anyone would want to frequent. Ruby looked back at the short length of pipe protruding from the hillside. It looked for all the world like an ordinary drain. Now she knew it was a back entrance to the Lodge… but with the ghouls and the magical locks, probably not one worth using, even if she ever wanted to return.

  Abel crawled out last, then rose and dusted off his pants. Sanford said, “Let’s be on our way–”

  “Is that you, master?” A figure stepped out of the shadows by the fence near the street and approached them. Diana had her pistol out in a flash, but Sanford stepped into her line of fire, making Ruby hiss in frustration.

  “Altman?” Sanford said, astonished. “How did you survive?”

  The man stepped closer, head lowered, face hidden in a broad-brimmed hat. Then he removed the hat and smiled, and though there was nothing alarming about his visage, Sanford gasped and took a step back.

  “Well, that’s an interesting question. Your Altman wasn’t quite dead when you jumped through that window, so Cain put the amulet around his neck, cut off his finger, and dropped it into the tub of sea water they’d prepared for you.” The man spread his arms wide, and one of his hands held a strange, curved dagger. “They made me. After I rose from the water and gasped my first breath, they asked me if I knew of any secret escape routes out of the Lodge, and oh, I know them all.”

  Oh, Ruby knew this sinking sensation well: when she found an unexpectedly good lock on a door between her and her escape route, or when a police officer made his rounds on the street below just as she was about to lower herself from a ledge, or when a door clicked open and one of her victims came home early. Except, all those other times, she’d managed to get away. This time, she didn’t see a way out, and that sinking feeling just kept sinking, deeper and deeper.

  Diana started to shuffle around, trying to get a clear shot at the comet. Ruby saw that and took courage. They weren’t done yet, were they? They’d made it through those tunnels. They could make it through this.

  “You know about two-thirds of my escape routes, anyway,” Sanford said. “Just my luck that you happened to know the one I picked. Tell me, is my Altman–”