“Where are the others?” The other guy said.
“Mike’s parking on the other side, closer to the statue,” Henry said. “So we won’t attract attention. But it’s pretty empty out here.”
“I wish we could do it in front of a crowd.”
“Well, that would be pretty fucking stupid, Chuck, don’t you think?”
“I’m just saying.”
Penny thought quickly that if she could just get away quickly for a few seconds and find a single other person, she could at least beg them to call the police. New Yorkers, in her experience, were usually happy to help. Or anyway, they were brusque about helping but they were never shy about it.
She swallowed and thought that if she could quickly stomp on Henry’s foot hard enough and elbow Chuck in his side, she could buy herself a few extra seconds.
It would be better if she weren’t gagged, then she could scream. From beneath her hood, she glanced down at their feet. Henry was wearing boots, but Chuck was wearing sneakers. She’d stomp on Chuck’s foot, then.
She breathed in and out once, twice, three times…
It was almost as if Henry felt her sudden shift, her wind up before she attempted something, but all he could do was say, “Penny.”
Cole, please find me, Penny thought with all the strength of will within her. Before she could chicken out, she raised her leg as she took a step forward and stomped hard on Chuck’s foot, as hard as she could possibly manage. She had less than a second to swing her arms from behind her, elbowing Henry in the ribs. It was more awkward than violent but it startled them enough for her to take off running. The hood covered about half of her face and she shook her head as she ran wildly, trying to throw it off her head.
She could have sworn she’d seen a few people around but now it seemed everyone was gone. She saw a figure in black with a cart who looked like a transient person just trying to live their life and she ran at them even as she heard Henry and Chuck’s footsteps behind her.
She tried to scream around her gag as best she could and the figure turned around. It was a woman with ragged hair and a face that needed washing. She blinked at Penny.
“Oh dear, honey, what are you in?”
Penny reached her and the woman pulled down her gag with dirty fingernails.
“Call the police!” Penny shrieked. “Anybody! They’re going to kill people! They kidnapped me! Help me! Police!”
“Oh, girl, I don’t got a phone!” The woman said, looking damn sorry about it. “Oh shit, shit!” The woman grabbed Penny’s arm and they ran even as the men caught up to them. Penny screamed bloody murder, hoping that at least would draw some attention, but it was dark and desolate in the park.
Which was strange, it being Central Park, and now she wondered if it was no accident. Maybe they’d cast some kind of spell to clear their spot for The Reckoning because as Henry had pointed out, it wouldn’t be wise to try this in front of a crowd.
The woman was yanking her by the arm as they ran uphill across a grassy incline and Penny glanced back, her view half blocked by the hood. Henry’s face was twisted with rage and he stretched his hand out in her direction, spitting as he spoke what sounded like nonsense. When she turned her head again, the base of a streetlamp near the curb ahead burst out of the ground and came swinging toward them as if hurled by an invisible giant.
Penny screamed and tried to pull the woman out of the way as she ducked, but the lamp caught her rescuer in the head and she went tumbling to the ground, pulling Penny down with her as their arms were linked.
“No, no, no!” Penny cried, tears streaming down her face. She stumbled to her feet. One of her shoes had come off and she staggered to run but they were on her now, Henry grabbing her so hard by the arm, she howled in pain.
“No!” Penny said again. “Henry, please! Don’t do this!” She wondered if there was any reasoning with him at all, if she could get him on her side. “You’re angry! I know you’re angry!” She sniffed, and her voice shook, but she fought to appear genuine even as he was dragging her back in the direction of the Alice in Wonderland statue. “Lots of people are angry, Henry! You’re not alone! Maybe…maybe the world has been very cruel to you! Maybe life hasn’t been fair! Let me…let me help you! I can understand if you let me! You don’t have to hurt people-“
Henry swiveled her around to face him and slapped her across the face. “You don’t know me,” he said, all but hissing. “You never did. Don’t try to negotiate, unsalvaged.”
Maybe it won’t work, Penny thought desperately. They were a bunch of stupid and hateful young men playing with dark forces. They might have successfully conjured this potion that would turn people into monsters, but that didn’t mean they knew the mechanics of how to get it to poison New York City.
That was before she saw the canons.
They came into the clearing and Penny recognized the Alice statue. There was Alice, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter all sitting on mushrooms. The place was empty but lit up by torches stuck in the dirt around the stone circle that framed the statue. Henry’s friends were all there already and several of them were standing at fixed points on the fringes of the circle, quietly muttering in a monotone chant with their eyes closed. They all looked so much like Henry it felt as if she were seeing his clones. They all wore black t-shirts and black pants. And they all looked as sickly as he did as they stood, slightly stooped over, seemingly praying to the trees.
Henry and Chuck dragged her over to the Alice statue and bound her next to the Mad Hatter so that she was sitting on top of one of the mushrooms, her wrists tied to a rope around Alice’s neck.
Henry and Chuck stood in front of her; their hands clasped. They looked as though they were waiting for something to happen.
Penny took a deep breath and screamed as loud as she could.
“They won’t hear you,” Henry said, laughing. “Nobody will hear you, sister.”
The other young men raised their hands all at once, their voices getting louder as they recited their spell. The trees they were standing in front of began to transform, becoming first black iron and stone and then changing shape as their canopies lurched over, their trunks slowly bending. They all morphed into giant canons and Penny’s mouth dropped open. She supposed the small canon she’d seen back at the house had been a test. Who knew what it had been originally? She wondered if their front walk had been missing a sapling.
Penny’s heart pounded. She muttered pleas under her breath, not just for her but for the city.
Then it occurred to her that there was no potion. Where was the potion? It should have been in huge barrels, perhaps rolled out on carts? It had to be enough to rain down on the city and turn who knew how many New Yorkers into slimy, tentacled monsters.
She watched as Chuck casually strolled over to a hose fixed near the grass. Except there was no regular garden hose attached to the fixture stuck into the ground now, but something much bigger like a fire hose. Chuck grabbed the end of it and it began to unwind as he dragged it over to the first canon. One of The Salvaged went to the spigot and picked up a wrench from the ground to turn it. He had to get someone to help him.
Penny caught on and expected the same potion she’d seen packed in a tiny vial to come flooding out of the hose. But instead, the two men dragged the hose over to the lip of the canon and Penny heard a noise like old pipes whining and then a sort of glugging sound as a grayish sludge spurted out from the hose into the canon.
They’d changed the consistency of the potion. It was less fluid now.
Henry spun around and grinned as he spoke. His eyes were wild. “See, it begins to dissipate in the air but first we shoot it high and cast a cloud curse! Then it dissolves within the precipitation and rains down on New York!”
It was dark, yet it was only early evening in the city. There would be plenty of people about and none of them would be expecting rain.
“What happens after this?” Penny shouted down at her brother. He was pouring some
kind of sand in a pattern on the stone. “After your big Reckoning? You turn half the city into monsters and then…what? What’s the point?”
“Then everyone fears us,” Henry said, shrugging. “What’s better than that?”
Penny almost laughed but instead, she sputtered and said, “So many things, Henry!”
“It’s okay.” He walked up to her and patted her leg. “You don’t understand because you’re a woman.”
Penny groaned and wished she had something slightly softer to bang her head against than a statue.
Penny watched them, having run out of ideas. If nothing else, she hoped that Henry was hit with the potion himself and became a monster. Yet, even after everything, she felt guilty for thinking it.
“You know, I have a boyfriend now,” Penny said, sighing. She looked up at the moon and pictured Cole, warm and solid as she curled up to him in bed. “If he ever manages to find you, he’s gonna kick your ass for hurting me and all these people.”
“What a bunch of bullshit!” Henry sneered at her now, happy to jeer. “You don’t have a boyfrie- AAAH!”
His sentence was interrupted by Cole’s bear which had come barreling out of the park’s forest and was now knocking him to the ground. It was frightening to watch. Cole was big and heavy enough that he could have killed Henry just by falling on top of him, but he seemed to be pulling his so-called punches just a little bit even as he dragged Henry away from Penny by the collar. Penny’s heart leaped and the other Salvaged had stopped for a moment, shocked by the sight. Then Penny heard the thundering sound of some large animals bounding through the park and five more bears appeared from around the circle. It was bedlam and though it was precisely what Penny had wished for, it was horrifying to witness. She turned her head away as the bears mauled The Salvaged, though they seemed to be trying to disarm them more than seriously maim them. Half the cult gave up immediately and went screaming out into the park. Cole, she saw, was keeping Henry prisoner. Henry had flailed and ripped his shirt getting away from Cole and now Cole had him locked in place, Henry’s shoulder locked between his teeth, only threatening to bite down if Henry moved again. Henry seemed to have gotten that message, though he couldn’t stop screaming.
“What the fuck!” Henry shrieked. “Where did the fucking bears come from!”
Cole’s unmistakable eyes went to Penny and she smiled at him and said, “I told you I had a boyfriend, asshole.”
Nobody was filling the canons, the spell would not be cast, and now Penny heard sirens blaring, footsteps approaching. Penny saw the lights of cop cars in the distance.
A young woman all in black and leather came running in from the road and shouted, “Shifters! Get human! Quick! The cops are coming!”
Penny blinked and the ridiculous thought passed through her mind that surely cops would not arrest bears, until she remembered that they would probably be shot or tranquilized since the cops would not imagine that they were “good guys.”
She watched all the bears turn back into their human selves at once. Cole now had Henry in a headlock, the other shifters, mostly burly looking men, had the remaining cult members restrained. Penny looked to the mysterious girl in black but she was already gone just as the police appeared, running down the grassy incline with flashlights. They shouted for everyone to halt, that the NYPD was here.
“If you weren’t Penny’s brother,” she heard Cole growl in Henry’s ear, “I’d kill you where you stand.”
Henry curled his lip and started to shout something that sounded like a curse and Penny screamed for Cole, who looked up just he was thrown back. Henry bolted and a cop pulled his weapon. He stopped in front of a canon. His skin looked like wax paper now and there were dark circles under his eyes. Penny hid her face, her hands still roped to Alice. She wondered if her idiot brother was about to get shot.
Henry opened his mouth and said, “You are all fools! You will not be salvaged!”
He looked like he had more to say but just then, with a great whining creak, the lip of the canon he was standing right under tipped down and potion sludge poured over Henry’s head.
Penny gasped and Henry let out a deafening wail as everyone; shifter, cop, and amateur dark wizard alike watched while Henry’s skin began to ripple as he screamed, his eyes turning black as they rolled back into his head. Penny wanted to look away but found morbid curiosity making her watch as his hand disappeared into his arms and his arms disappeared into his body. He melted in on himself, his skin graying and turning slimy. His cheeks bulged out and tentacles grew from his back.
“Aw, shit!” One of the cops shouted. “It’s one of those things from New Jersey!”
A tentacle shot out toward the cop just as someone pulled a taser.
Whatever Henry had transformed into was apparently pretty sensitive to shock and now the monster he’d become screamed and shook, sparks alighting his body, just before he went completely still.
“Is it dead or unconscious?” One of the cops asked.
One of Cole’s shifter friends replied, “Fuck knows.”
The aftermath of arrests, explanation, and confusion was a circus. But eventually, the good guys were sorted from the bad. Penny, having been untied and given a blanket, was sitting on a park bench, sipping from a bottle of water a cop had handed her. It was now nearly midnight, the place roped off with yellow tape. Cole had spoken to the cops about the contents of the canons and a swarm of people in hazmat suits had swarmed the place. They were under the ground, inspecting the cargo container full of “potion” that Cole had described as “extremely toxic and hazardous.” They’d checked his credentials and now everyone was asking him about a million questions as they dealt with the poisonous stuff.
The homeless woman who had helped Penny was in the hospital after Penny had made a point of having her seen to.
Penny had not had a chance to speak to Cole yet. She clutched her bottle of water and tucked her blanket a little tighter around her. He kept looking over at her as he spoke to the cops, as if to make sure she was still there. She could feel almost palpably how much he wanted to be putting his arms around her, which was almost as good as actually having his arms around her.
Penny heard a contented sigh and turned her head to see that mysterious woman in black had appeared next to her on the bench. She sat back and stretched her arms out on the bench, as if surveying a work of art she’d just finished.
“Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.”
Penny blinked at her and said, “Are you one of Cole’s friends?”
“Um…” The woman squinted, as if uncertain. “Yeah. I’m Cole’s friend. I’m your friend too. Think of me as...an interested party. The important thing is, it all worked out.” She smiled and sighed happily then and Penny cast her a side-eyed glance. The woman was acting like she’d been the one to save the day in the first place.
“I mean…” Penny shrugged. “I don’t know if you’re aware of the whole situation. But my brother turned out to be a psychopath…or maybe he always was. And now he’s a big, slimy tentacle monster thing. What are they even going to do with him? Build a giant, plexiglass cell?”
“Well…” The girl scratched her chin. “Yeah, he was probably always a psychopath. And, ya’ know, he could probably stand to be a slimy, tentacle monster for a while. Don’t sweat it too much.”
Penny snorted at that.
“You’re so familiar,” Penny muttered. “But I can’t place you.”
“I’m kinda like...your guardian angel,” Delilah said. “I mean I’m not a guardian angel. But you can think of me that way. If it makes you feel better.”
“Guardian angel,” Penny said, smiling. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, just do me a favor and hold on to Hot Stuff over there,” she said, nodding to Cole. “Fall in love, get married, have bear babies-“
Penny gasped at her. “Seriously, how do you know-“
“Don’t ask,” she said, shaking her head. “It really doesn’t matter.”
/>
“Guardian angel.”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” Penny sighed. She supposed it wasn’t any stranger than anything else she’d learned about in the last couple of days. If the world had guardian angels, well, that was pretty nice. “No worries, by the way. I’m madly in love with Professor J. Cole Montgomery.” She smiled, staring at him. He seemed to feel her eyes on him and turned to nod at her.
The woman pumped her fist and said, “Yes! Excellent! High five!” Penny high-fived but gave her a funny look. “Okay!” She clapped her hands. “I guess my work here is done then. Penny Sax, I think you’re gonna have a decent life. Probably way better than mine. Tell that bear boyfriend to be good. See ya’ in the next life!” With that, she stood and spun to hop over the bench and trot off into the darkness of the park. Penny turned to watch her, utterly bemused by the strange woman, but when she turned her head, the woman in black was already gone.
It was another half-hour before Cole finally got a chance to run over. Penny hopped to her feet and dropped her blanket and her bottle of water and let him enfold her in his arms. The night was chilly now and he rubbed her back and her arms. He cradled her cheek and looked in her eyes.
“Jesus,” Cole murmured. “I only just found you and I thought I was going to lose you already.”
“I’m right here,” Penny whispered. “I told you, I’ll be right here for as long as you want.” He leaned down to kiss her and she wrapped her arms around his neck. He lifted her right off her feet as they kissed, and she giggled into his mouth. But her tittering was silenced by his tongue that curled around hers and she moaned into his mouth and then pulled away to lay soft, little kisses along his jaw.
Secrets & Dark Magic Page 11