Page 27 of Queen of Volts

She did not recognize her white-gloved hands as they clutched the revolver at her hip.

But she did recognize the gun.Thatgun.

It was too late to turn back, and so she crept deeper onto the subway platform. Her heart thundered wildly, but she was too numb to feel it.

“The Doves should be down to fewer than ten people,” Grace said. If they could trust Lola’s brother, the Doves lurked in a sewer connected to this tunnel—strange for those named after birds to dwell underground. “If they’re smart, they won’t put up a fight.”

“The Doves aren’t a gang—they’re a cult,” Roy breathed. “What makes you think they’ll surrender quietly?”

Enne had not come here intending brutality. Even assassins who lived in a gutter could see the value of Enne’s proposition, of joining her and uniting the North Side underonelord.

“They’ll capitulate,” Enne told them. If the deranged state of Lola’s brother was any indication, the Doves needed saving.

“And if they don’t,” Grace added, “we have enough numbers to make them.”

“And Scythe?” Roy pressed.

Ivory might’ve been dead, but her second wasn’t. Enne had only encountered Scythe on one occasion, at the first meeting that Levi had called between the lords, and she remembered him as cold, intimidating, and patronizing—she doubted he would agree to their terms. The thought of facing him broke through her daze and made her nerves feel tauter than a tightrope. Maybe violence was certain, then. But that was one man, one fight.

Her hands squeezed the revolver tighter.

True to what Lola’s brother had described, the group approached a grate in the wall, large and circular, with metal bars wide enough to squeeze past. A connection point between the city’s labyrinth of Mole tunnels and sewers. A rivulet of piss and who knew what else pooled across the floor, and pigeon and seagull feathers floated at its surface. Somewhere in the darkness, rats scurried along the tunnel’s edges.

Enne crinkled her nose. “I guess we found it.”

The stench intensified as they crept through the bars and into the next tunnel. She wished she’d brought perfume to dab beneath her nose—the odor’s taste coated her tongue, waxy and feculent. She, Grace, and Roy approached a canal of waste and exchanged a revolted look.

“How can anyone live in a place like this?” Enne choked.

A voice answered her, high-pitched and breathy, echoing down the tunnels.

“They can’t.”

Roy jolted and—if not for Grace hurriedly grabbing his coat collar—nearly fell over the ledge into the sewer. He pointed his gun down the tunnel toward the noise. “Who said that?” he demanded, his whiteboot voice full of authority.

The darkness obscured all but a few feet in front of them. The many Scarhands behind Enne had clambered through the entrance to crowd around the canal’s edge, all of them pressed shoulder to shoulder, back-to-back. Enne stiffened at each touch—the very sensation of it felt wrong; her body felt wrong.

“Who’s there?” Enne called out.

“Here,” Grace said, and she flicked on a flashlight and shined it down the cement walls, but they were alone.

“Where’s Laila?” a nervous voice asked behind them. Enne and Grace whipped around, Grace beaming the flashlight into the squinting eyes of an anxious Scarhand. The young man shoved the flashlight away and scanned the faces around him. “She’s missing.”

Beside him, a girl’s eyes widened. “So is Mina. She was just here a moment ago.”

A trap, Enne thought frantically, raising the revolver.

“Everyone stand together,” Roy called out, and the group huddled even closer, making Enne’s nerves wind up even tighter. She could feel someone’s breath hot and damp against her neck.

Someone screamed behind her. “Linus! Linus is gone! He was right here—”

“Shut up,” Enne snapped. “If you shout, we can’t hear—”

“Gianni’s gone, too!”

Quiet fell, and with Grace wildly waving the flashlight in every direction, no one should have been able to sneak on them without detection. But something sinister and heavy hung in the putrid air, a sense of dread Enne couldn’t shake. She’d made a mistake coming here.

“Everyone out!” Enne gasped. “Back to the Mole tunnels.”