Midnight`s Daughter Page 0,61
grab whatever I could while the troops took the mages apart, assuming vice versa didn’t prove to be true. In my own defense, I did try to talk them out of it, but the lynch-mob mentality had taken over and there wasn’t much I could do. Olga had merely crushed me to her enormous bosom and promised to see that no one hurt me. I grabbed a couple of knives and a.44 automatic out of Benny’s office equipment and silently returned the sentiment.
It was almost funny, as our crew of forty or so pissed-off amateurs and a few gimlet-eyed professionals surrounded the small buff building. “Stay behind me, small one,” Olga said, then eschewed subtlety to bash in the door with her ax.
The rest of the crew took their lead from her and made doors for themselves through windows, service hatches and, in the case of one particularly large mountain troll, a brick wall. I followed Olga in as soon as her considerable girth managed to squeeze through the door. It was a bit of a letdown to realize that the building was empty. Even worse, it had the feel of a place that had been so for a while. No electricity lit the overhead lights, a fine layer of dust coated everything and the only discernible odor was a faint reek from the rows of red and blue shoes behind a low counter.
I leaned against one of the concrete block walls and watched the mob take the place apart. “No one here,” Olga said, squinting about with her inadequate eyes. I doubted she could see very well despite the numerous holes that had been knocked in the place, letting in midday light, but her sense of smell was probably as good as mine and I didn’t smell anyone.
“Should we tell them?” I asked, lighting up.
“No, let them have fun.” She hopped up on the counter, which groaned slightly under her weight, and watched the destruction. “What you think?” she demanded when I didn’t comment.
I closed my eyes and mentally filtered out the smell of weed, mildewed pleather and sweaty troll. A faint but discernible trace of stale air wafted to me from somewhere nearby. I opened my eyes. “I was wondering what’s behind all the shoes.”
Olga hefted her ax and swung around to face the collection. She cleaved the center section clean in two. “That,” she said helpfully.
I regarded the set of stairs going down into bare earth with disapproval. I hate dark staircases, especially when I know I won’t like what I’ll find at the other end. I glanced at Olga. “It might be better if we don’t try to take everyone down. Don’t want anyone blocking the exit.”
She nodded and called a huge troll over. He had on a pair of jeans, which surprised me, since I hadn’t known they made them in that size, but no shoes. I caught myself staring at his knobby feet, which had the usual number of toes for a troll—three—and made myself stop. “Wait here,” she told him sternly. “Don’t let others pass. If we not back in half an hour, come down and kill everything.”
He grunted, which I had trouble deciphering, but Olga apparently understood. No one else appeared to have noticed us, which wasn’t surprising considering that the demons were setting the red pleather booths on fire and the trolls had started throwing bowling pins through the unlit beer signs. Their aim was pretty lousy, but there were a lot of pins, and the resounding crashes and tinkles of glass seemed to amuse them. Troll bowling.
I turned to Olga. “There’s no chance in hell anyone down there doesn’t know we’re coming. Let’s take a quick peek, but if I tell you to run back up the stairs, you do it, no arguments. Okay?”
“You funny little woman,” she said, and started down the stairs. I sighed and followed.
I have better-than-human eyesight in the dark, but even I couldn’t see much on those stairs. I don’t doubt that Olga was completely blind, but she never faltered. Trolls aren’t exactly graceful, but they have a low center of gravity for climbing around mountains and fjords, so I figured I was more likely to fall than she was. Luckily for me, four hundred pounds of troll stood between me and whatever was down there, something I found vaguely comforting.
When we finally ran out of stairs, we found ourselves in a tunnel carved out of the local sandstone. It looked like some of the