The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,28
fingers. Most were still embedded in chunks of concrete but a careful search in the weeds revealed a broken bar, almost straight, just over a foot long. I slid it up inside my sleeve so it sat sharply against my bicep with the other end resting in my palm. I tucked my hands into my pockets and headed to the meet while the devil smiled in the moonlight.
Graves only scare you if you’re afraid of death. Now, they just make me sad. The Gilded Cemetery was built for the High Elf community of Sunder and was therefore quite small. Nobody anticipated that many members of the High Race would come to the end of their long life while slumming it down in the fire city.
The Coda had handicapped the Elven lifespan, so more of them were being caught out in their last moments. The Gilded Cemetery was filled with unfortunate Elves stuck far from home. As I walked under the brass archway on the grounds, it felt overcrowded. Not just because of the souls tucked up in beds of dirt, but also those livelier ones that were packed into a crypt chattering like children.
The Nail Gang had arrived.
The crypt in question was the largest on the block, shaped out of black slabs of polished marble. There were no bouquets and no letters and no evidence of anyone coming to pay their respects, other than the invading idiots who’d borrowed it for the night. As I crossed the garden of forgotten gravestones, I could see a family crest engraved above the doorway.
Oh no. It’s the Hendricks crypt.
The Hendricks crypt was constructed by Governor Lark, as a way of telling his friend, High Chancellor Eliah Hendricks, that he would always have a home in Sunder.
Eliah Hendricks had been my friend too. No soul in the world had ever treated me so well, and I never treated anyone worse.
I never asked whether they’d found his body or whether they’d been able to bring it home. He might actually be inside there already. I doubt anyone would have told me if he was. Either way, there were pests and parasites in the Hendricks crypt and you couldn’t have asked for a more willing exterminator.
I stepped inside the vault and bowed my head in respect. More than a dozen men were waiting, and there was room for two dozen more. I leaned against the wall, hands still in my pockets. The candelabras had been lit and most of the men carried torches. All of them carried clubs or knives. The only face I recognized was the orange-topped teen who’d recruited me. I got comfortable and waited for the real leaders to arrive.
At the back of the room was a stone sepulcher, complete with a closed coffin. Was Hendricks’ body inside? I couldn’t tell. If the coffin was empty, that didn’t mean anything at all. Eliah could have easily been buried elsewhere, or not at all. But if it wasn’t empty? Well, I still wasn’t ready to see that. Even if the room hadn’t been infested with uninvited guests, I didn’t have it in me to open it up and check.
The young men chuckled and boasted. I looked around the room, seeing if I could make out which members of the group might give me the most trouble.
Damn, some of these kids are young. Two gang-members beside me couldn’t have been over fifteen. The devil didn’t like that. What was a Nail Gang doing recruiting children? I suppose when you’re taking potshots at old ladies and cripples you can’t get too picky about the company.
No one else arrived for a few minutes, so the redhead stepped forward.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “thank you for answering the call.”
He pulled the neck of his shirt down to reveal a pink scratch on his sternum about three inches long. Was it meant to symbolize a nail? Was it drawn with a nail? All I knew was that it looked infected. Every other member followed suit and presented the same scabby line on their pubescent chests.
“We are here tonight to put into action the work of our people. In the years before the Coda, we were the sub-class of Sunder. Left to eat shit and suffer while those who called themselves sacred stood above us. Now it’s our time at the top and we will clean these streets of the garbage that remains.”
Grunts and cheers of approval spewed out from the boys around me.