He shot her a look of terror. "But the torch —"
Jazz tore the duffel from his hands and let it fall to the floor of the tunnel, hoping one of the bastards would trip on it. Cadge wanted the torch in case they had to hide some-where that the light from above didn't filter in and where there were no electrical lights still siphoning power from the upside world. But they couldn't afford to lose a step.
Better to live in the dark than die in the light.
Her face burned with exertion and hatred, not only for these men but for herself. The BMW man proved it, and she'd seen that recognition in all of their eyes. They were here for her. Jazz had brought blood and perhaps even death to Harry and his United Kingdom. Her heart tightened into a fist in her chest.
She couldn't let them catch her. The pain they would inflict on her would be terrible, but far worse would be the knowledge that her mother had spent so many years preparing her to survive and that she had failed at the task.
She had to live for Mum.
"Here," Cadge said.
The only light came from vent shafts twenty yards in ei-ther direction, but her eyes had become used to the dark in the past couple of months and she saw immediately what Cadge pointed to. A small narrow platform was set into the left side of the tunnel. Against the far wall were thick pipes that thrust deeper into the Underground and ran up to the ceiling of the tunnel. They branched off there, some follow-ing the tunnel both ways and some going straight up through the ceiling toward the surface. Others, however, turned and vanished into a crawl space atop the platform wall, no doubt once having carried water or power into other tunnels and stations from here. Many of the pipes had large wheel valves, but it was the ladder that mattered.
She gave Cadge a push and they ran for it together.
As they climbed onto the platform, the men rounded the bend in the tunnel.
"Where d'you think you're going?" one of them called, and then laughed.
As the laugh died out, Jazz heard another sound. Cadge had reached the ladder ahead of her, but he turned and stared back down the tunnel —not at the men but beyond them, as though he could see the source of the distant shriek that came whistling up the tunnel, building in volume.
"Fuck me blind," Cadge whispered.
The BMW man reached the platform first and leaped up onto it. He lunged at Jazz. She turned and squared off, letting him come, and then swung her leg to kick him in the balls. He was ready for the attack, as she'd figured he would be. It had been a feint.
She drove her fingers into his eyes.
He screamed, reached for his face, and Cadge slammed a shoulder into him, knocking him off the platform. The others tried to catch him, but the BMW man slipped through their hands and hit the ground.
"Jesus, my eye!" he cried. "It's bleeding. Bitch popped my eye!"
The words were a shout of fury and pain; otherwise, Jazz would never have been able to hear them —not over the shrieking wind that came hurtling along the tunnel. The howling noise grew louder. To her ears it sounded like a train derailing and the terrified screams of the passengers, all merged into an infernal chorus.
The Hour of Screams.
A hundred rats ran along the tunnel, all in the same direc-tions, ignoring the humans and seeking darkness once again.
"Jazz, a song!" Cadge shouted, his lips right beside her ear.
Her hair whipped past her face. The wind buffeted her, and now she saw that it had spectral texture.
She nodded and huddled with him at the base of the ladder. Jazz clapped her hands against her ears to block out as much of the noise as she could. The banshee wail of the Hour of Screams grew louder, grating on her mind, stripping away her thoughts.
Harry had said to pick a song but hadn't elaborated much. Jazz knew it had to be something that she felt in her heart, that meant something to her, or she wouldn't be able to concentrate on it. But as she tried to focus, tried to choose, the Hour of Screams grew so loud she could barely think, and nothing came to mind. Snatches of lyrics, but she couldn't think how any of those songs went.
The stars, she thought. Something about the stars.
And then she had it, a song she could never forget, a melody that would never leave her.
Are the stars out tonight?
I don't know if it's cloudy or bright.
I only have eyes for you, dear.
Jazz sang the words softly at first and then louder, defiantly. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but she felt Cadge at her side, huddled against her. Fear cradled her and she sur-rendered to it. Her sanctuary had been shattered. Her blood would soon stain the Underground, and the vanishing that had begun the day of her mother's murder would be com-plete.
The Hour of Screams bore down upon them. Jazz shook, breath hitching in her chest. Things slipped past her that might have been gusts of wind but were not. They caressed her, and she knew these were not ghosts like the phantoms she had encountered before.
"I only have eyes for you," she sang.
Beside her, Cadge shouted as though to drive the screams away and then began singing louder. She forced her-self to open her eyes against the buffeting winds to make cer-tain he was all right. Cadge had his own eyes screwed shut and hands clamped over his ears. His lips moved along with a song, but over her own singing and the howling of the Hour of Screams, Jazz couldn't make out the words or the tune.
Motion on the tracks caught her eye. She looked and saw the men crumbling to their knees. Ethereal shapes whipped around them, darting in close and then drawing back, pulsing in the air. The men beat their arms uselessly against the wind. Their eyes were wide with terror, and their shrieks joined the symphony.
And then it passed. The wind began to diminish and so did the volume of the screams, until moments later it lin-gered as nothing more than a distant whistle, just as it had been the first time she'd heard it from so far away with Harry and Cadge.
The men did not rise immediately, nor did they curse or shout. One by one, they looked up, eyes still wide. One of them wore a grin that seemed slashed into his face. He started to laugh and the BMW man slapped him, which only made the thug laugh harder.
The BMW man's gouged eye bled down his cheek. He glanced around with his one good eye and spotted her, then he bared his teeth and growled like an animal. His upper lip curled back to reveal crooked teeth.
One by one they rose, driven mad by the Hour of Screams.
"Rats," one of the men muttered, staring at Cadge and licking his lips. "Drive 'em out."
"Jazz," Cadge whispered.
The men were moving slowly. The first one reached the platform and began to haul himself up.
"Jazz!" Cadge shouted. He grabbed her arm and whipped her around, shoved her toward the ladder.
"Climb!"
Heart thundering in her ears, she grabbed hold of the rungs and scrambled upward. Cadge shouted after her, urg-ing her faster. Jazz caught his face with the heel of her shoe, so quickly was he following.
"Go! Go!" he yelled.
At the top, hands sliding over dust and grime, she pulled herself into the crawl space between the thick pipes. It couldn't have been more than two feet high but wide enough that she twisted sideways and rolled into the dark-ness. Turning around to face the way she'd come, she reached out to grab hold of Cadge's hand as he topped the ladder.