As the bus inched forward, I could make out the uniforms of government security guards. The frigging werewolves were in on the hunt. Which meant that no matter how good my disguise or how foul smelling my coat, I wouldn’t escape their detection. I had to get off. Now.
I pulled the yellow bell cord. A sharp ding sounded. When the driver didn’t stop, I yanked the cord twice more.
“Heard you the first time, pal,” he growled. “The stop isn’t for another block.”
“Here’s fine,” I insisted.
“Can’t do it.”
Another block would put me too close to the checkpoint. And depending on which way the wind was blowing… Crap. Outside my window, the triangular flaps from a theater awning were batting westward. If I disembarked any nearer, the wolves would definitely pick up my scent.
I slapped at the back door. “C’mon, man. I’ve gotta go.”
“Cross your legs and clench.”
Several passengers chuckled at the driver’s quip, but it gave me an idea.
“Fine,” I said, pretending to unbuckle my pants as I squatted. “It’s your mess.”
The ruse worked. The driver’s eyes started in the rearview mirror, and he stomped the brakes. The back door flopped open. I wasted no time jumping from the bus, the driver’s colorful threats trailing after me.
I waited until I was halfway down the block before peeking over a shoulder. At the checkpoint, one of the wolves had straightened from a car he’d been inspecting. His head was tilted back in a sniffing posture. Through the smoke and exhaust, a slip of my scent had reached him.
Swearing, I hastened my pace.
At the far end of the block, I spotted the four officers I’d seen from the bus. They were turning back in my direction, one of them speaking into his shoulder mike. Wonderful. The werewolf must have radioed to tell them I was near. I slowed as more officers appeared. They were stopping pedestrians now, herding everyone toward the checkpoint with shouts and pistol motions.
Several officers remained behind to watch buildings—no doubt until a wolf arrived to clear them. I took a hard right into a Korean grocery store. There would be a rear exit, maybe an alleyway, a fence I could jump. But I had barely made it past a stand of colorful snack bags when a squat woman charged from behind the register and blocked my way.
“You leave!” she shouted up at me. “No steal food!”
My disguise was a little too good, apparently. “No, no, I’m not here to take anything. I just wanted to see if you have a back door.” My hope was to slip out before the officers could cover the rear of the building. I pointed past the woman and spoke slowly. “Back door?”
“No steal food!” she repeated, jabbing me in the stomach with a pair of fingers.
“Hey! Ow!”
All right, this wasn’t working. Not wanting to draw any more attention, I retreated back onto the sidewalk. To one side of me, the police were continuing to drive the crowd forward. On the other, two wolves were approaching from the checkpoint, closing in on my scent. No way I’d be able to challenge them without my staff and sword.
Trapped mid block, I dug an arm into a trashcan, pretending to look for food. My thoughts scrambled madly. The second a wolf got close enough to ID me, I’d be grabbed. And given the severity of the accusations, the best I could hope for was life without parole.
Assuming I wasn’t torn apart.
Need to calm down, I thought above my pounding heart. Need to think.
Shoes clanged over metal as the first wave of distressed pedestrians moved past, the herding officers at their rear.
I honed in on the clanging sound.
There’s my escape.
Using the pedestrians as cover, I stayed low and wended my way toward the noise. Soon, a rectangular opening in the sidewalk appeared, covered by sections of metal grating. The final section rattled under the growing footfalls.
I hustled ahead of the barking calls of the officers, shouldered several pedestrians aside, and pulled the grate free. A few complaints went up around me, but I was quickly inside and hanging from a shelf beneath the lip of the opening. I pulled the grating back into place and looked down between my dangling feet. It was a decent drop, about twenty feet to the tracks below, but it could have been worse. Some of the holes went down five stories.
Still, going underground was going underground—something I hated worse than tax time. A pressure was already building against my chest, thinning my breaths. I closed my eyes.
Let’s just hope a train isn’t coming, I thought, and let go.
I swung my arms around until my palms were aimed at the up-rushing ground and shouted, “Vigore!”
Energy ripped through me and hit the ground with enough force to stall my descent. I landed in a crouch as though I’d only dropped five feet, pocketed my beard and sunglasses, and peered up at the shadows passing over the grate. One of the shadows stopped. A light glared and swept across my face.
“Hey!” an officer shouted. “Stay right there!”
Great, some goody two shoes must’ve alerted them to my plunge.
I hurried down the tracks until I was out of view of the grate. Jumping the thrumming third rail, I climbed onto a service walkway that paralleled the tracks. The tunnel stretched north and south into blackness.
I dug through the bum’s coat pockets, hoping to find a lighter, but all I came up with was a sizeable collection of cigarette butts and a Honey Bun wrapper. That left my coin pendant. I loosened the coat and unbuttoned my shirt until the pendant dangled into view.
“Illuminare,” I said.
Energy crackled around the coin. Moments later, a soft blue light suffused it, illuminating the space for several feet ahead of me.
I took a moment to get my bearings. That the rail was active told me I was in the Seventh Avenue line. Unfortunately it didn’t feature any branches to Jersey. None of the subway lines did. Meaning I could either head north, in the direction of the Bronx, or south, toward lower Manhattan. I grimaced at the thought of entering Arnaud’s district before understanding I wouldn’t get that far, even if I wanted to. My pursuers knew I was down here. At this moment, officers would be descending into the stations on both sides of me, hemming me in.
As if to affirm the claustrophobic thought, to the north flashlights beams swam against a distant bend in the tunnel.
Adrenaline screaming through my body, I dimmed the light in the coin pendant and hurried south along the walkway. There were no light beams coming from the tunnel ahead of me—yet. But if wolves had joined the posse at my back, they would be on me in short time.
Think, Croft. Think goddammit.
The defunct Broadway line was only a block or so to the east, the stations all barricaded. If only I could find some way to—
There!
A metal door appeared in the wall to my left. I pulled the handle, surprised when a crust of rust broke off and the door swung open. A service tunnel plunged into darkness. I scooted inside and closed the door as a powerful flashlight beam shot past. The south-bound team had arrived.
I broke into a run, faded graffiti art on the tunnel’s brickwork whizzing past. I’d gone about a hundred feet when a cinderblock wall reared up in front of me.
Wha—?
I got my arms up a split second before impact. The violent rebound threw me onto my back, head cracking against the floor. Stars wheeled around my staring gaze.
I struggled into a kneeling position, then stood, catching myself against the wall. The cinderblocks glowed gray-blue in the light of my coin. When the Transit Authority had closed the Broadway line, they’d apparently sealed off all of the access tunnels. That could be remedied. Aiming my palms at the wall, I called power to my prism—or tried to. The collision had shrouded it in fog. I began a rapid centering chant to restore my ability to cast.
I didn’t get very far. A deep growl rumbled behind me.
I spun, the mantra breaking off. A second growl sounded, this one from a different body.
Two sets of eyes shone into view down the tunnel, their orange irises fiery with anger.
Beyond them, a small army of footsteps echoed toward the service tunnel entrance. I pressed my back to the wall like a cornered cat and squinted as a flashlight beam hit me in the eyes.
“We’ve got him!” an officer shouted.
24
With one hand blocking the flashlight beam, I could make out the advancing werewolves. They were still in human form, but the chase had aroused their lupine natures. Beneath wrinkling nostrils, lips peeled from fanged teeth. Muscles bulged underneath their uniforms.
Just need some time, I thought.
Summoning what meager power I could to my wizard’s voice, I shouted, “Stop!”
The wolves hesitated, startled more than enthralled, it seemed. Without taking my eyes off them, I removed my necklace, palming the large coin pendant, which continued to glow a pale blue, and held it out in front of me.
“This is silver,” I lied, the iron cold in my grip. “If I cast through it, it will burn you alive.”
When the wolves’ nostrils flared, I drew the coin back inside the bouquet of my coat to cloak its scent. The wolves would pick out the iron eventually, but not before my prism was restored.
I hoped.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said. “I just want to negotiate the terms of my surrender.” The pressure of being underground was stifling my voice, stealing its power. The words themselves would have to convince them.
“We don’t negotiate with cop-killing pieces of shit,” someone called back.
“Yeah, how about we just stick a few bullets between your eyes?” someone else put in.
I squinted toward the multiplying beams of light. Though I couldn’t see the police officers holding the flashlights, it wasn’t hard to imagine their hostile faces—or the guns they were aiming. If the wolves and NYPD had something in common, it was their belief that I had willfully murdered members of their brotherhood. Like blood spreading through water, a scarlet aura of vengeance united them. I would have to tread really damned carefully.
“I just have one request for my surrender,” I said.
“Lower your weapon!” an officer ordered.
“That Detective Hoffman make the arrest,” I persisted.
There was nothing special about Detective Hoffman. He just happened to be one of the few officers I knew by name, other than Vega. And I didn’t want to get Vega any more involved than she already was. Requesting Hoffman was a stalling tactic, something to buy me a precious minute or two.
“We’re not gonna warn you again, Croft! Lower your fucking weapon and get on the ground!”
I could practically feel the tension on their triggers.
I swallowed. “Just contact him, let me know he’s on the way, and I’ll do everything you say, I promise. No one gets hurt.”
The wolves growled in the silence that followed. Like the officers, they had heard rumors of my powers, the feats I was capable of. Publicity had its perks. It was this more than anything, I suspected, that held them at bay. If they knew how defenseless I was, my face would’ve been eating concrete by now. I blinked sweat from my lashes as I chanted softly and awaited the verdict.
Hopefully it wouldn’t come in the form of a firing squad.
The officers must have been consulting in whispers because one of them finally said, “We’re calling him now.”
My legs buckled in relief, but I steeled myself. I still had work to do. I closed my eyes to the wolves, the flashlight beams—pushed them to the back of my thoughts—and returned to my training with Lazlo.
This may be the most important lesson I ever teach you, my first teacher had said. If you lose your prism, you must retain your focus. A wizard who cannot cast is a dead wizard.
I remembered the way Lazlo’s cloudy, wolf-torn eye had stared into mine.
In the tunnels beneath New York, I whispered and re-whispered the centering mantra.
Deep in my mind, the prism vibrated. Power eddied through my body. I repeated the chant until the prism’s contours appeared through the fog, glowing as they returning to form.
“Hoffman’s on the way,” an officer barked. “Now surrender your weapon and get facedown on the floor, like you promised.” The flashlights advanced above a careful procession of footsteps.
I watched the wolves stalk closer too, the lead one sniffing the air.
“He’s not packing silver,” he growled, his advance becoming more confident.
The wolves were fifteen feet from me now, close enough that I could see follicles of hair growing from their foreheads and jowls. They couldn’t hold their wolves inside any longer. The hunger for pack justice was too powerful.
A little closer… I thought.
“I’m warning you, Croft,” an officer said.
I extended the coin out in front of me, its edges crackling with blue light.
“On my order,” I caught the same officer mutter.
It had to be now.
“Illuminare!” I bellowed.
The energy that stormed through my restored prism emerged from the coin as a dazzling explosion of light. For an instant, the tunnel turned bright white. The wolves recoiled with snarling cries. I could see the officers now—eight of them—arms thrown to their faces.
A shot went off, ricocheting from the wall to my left.
“Vigore!” I cried.
Power branched from my other palm and slammed into the wolves. They cannoned into the officers behind them, flipping them like bowling pins. When they landed, several officers pawed around for their weapons, stunned and blinded. I was safe from them for the moment. The wolves, with their uncanny senses of hearing and smell, were another story. They staggered onto their hands and feet, more lupine now than human.
Replacing the coin around my neck, I turned and pressed both hands to the wall.
“Forza dura!” I shouted.
In an explosion of mortar, the wall toppled away. I scrambled over the collapse and into the sewer-like stench of the Broadway line. Following the successful operation two weeks before, armed teams had swept the lines and destroyed the handful of remaining ghouls. Restoration work had already begun. I emerged through the dust to find a string of lights running along the tunnel above step ladders and large bundles of electrical wire. No workers, fortunately.
I dropped onto the tracks. A few blocks to the north, lights glowed where the Broadway line shared the Forty-Second Street station with the Seventh Avenue line. The station was inside the cordon and could still be manned by police. I sidestepped away from it and broke into a run.
I’d have to take my chances south.
My plan was to go about fifteen, twenty blocks, then climb one of the emergency staircases located halfway between stations. I’d blow open the hatch beneath the sidewalk and try to blend into the street scene, somewhere in the Twenties. From there, I’d work my way south and west toward the piers with Jersey-bound ferries. The last step—catching a boat—would be the most difficult, but I’d worry about that when I got there. Which was feeling far from certain.
It was my phobia, dammit. After only a hundred yards, my lungs were already heaving for air. My chest wasn’t allowing enough oxygen in or poisonous CO2 out.
Growls sounded from the service tunnel behind me.
And then there was the matter of the werewolves.
I’d read about the effects of bright lights on their brain synapses and had been counting on a longer time to recover. Now I listened in horror to the sounds of cinderblocks grating and toppling. So much for that theory. The wolves had just joined me in the line.
Ahead, a door to an emergency staircase appeared, but I was still inside the cordon. If any of the downed officers had recovered enough to radio out, the street would be covered. I shed my coat—the lion’s share of my disguise—and slung it in front of the door. With any luck, the wolves would stop and sniff it and then expend time deciding whether or not I’d ascended.
/> I ran on. With each gasping breath, a cramp gored my side; spots danced around my vision. From around a bend, the yellow lights of another station glowed into view. Crap. I was coming up on Thirty-fourth Street, a station the Broadway line shared with an intersecting line.
But as I started to slow, I spotted a parked vehicle ahead.
What in the…?
The vehicle pointing away from me looked like a cross between a large dune buggy and a truck. A flatbed hitched to its back was loaded with equipment. I took quick stock of the large tires balancing the vehicle on the tracks, two sets of smaller metal wheels in place to keep it from derailing. It was an MTA maintenance vehicle, no doubt parked outside the station for easy access. Someone had spray-painted BERTHA on the side of the truck in big balloon letters.
A set of keys dangled from Bertha’s ignition.
Oh, hell yes.
Heart slamming, I climbed through the crash bars and slid behind the steering wheel. Behind me I could hear clawed feet pounding the tracks. The smelly coat hadn’t fooled the wolves. I seized the key in the ignition, said a quick prayer, and gave a twist.
No response.
“Oh, Bertha, please don’t do this to me.”
I could hear the wolves’ harsh panting now, echoing down the tunnel.
I looked around the cab for something I might have missed. The automatic gearshift beside my right leg was slotted in Drive. I pushed it to Park and twisted the key again. Bertha’s engine chug-a-lugged for several agonizing seconds before turning over with a throaty roar.
“Yes!”
I yanked the gearshift into Drive and pressed the gas. The metal wheels whined against the rails, and Bertha rumbled forward. I waited for the speedometer to edge past twenty before allowing myself a glimpse into the truck’s side mirror. For a blessed instant, the tunnel curving away behind me was empty.
And then it wasn’t.
The two wolves, in full wolf form, were speeding toward me like they were on a greyhound track, eyes burning with the hunt. In comparison, I felt like I was moving through thick mud.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I pled, putting more weight on the gas pedal, which was already to the floor.
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 68