He feared how much he needed her.
A shudder wracked her, and she fought hard to bite back a whimper. He drew up close, knifeblade hands hovering over her, a benediction.
“Soon you’ll be past the pain. . where no one can touch you.”
Rory’s leather climbing shoes with their sticky black rubber soles were a tight fit, but Cal managed to squeeze into them. Colleen eased into her harness, the black nylon looping around her waist and thighs, then she secured Cal’s. She taped both their hands and chalked them.
As Doc and Goldie looked on, Cal craned his neck to stare at the mocking immensity of the building, water dribbling off the wild projections that made up its disturbing asymmetry.
Colleen studied him, her skillful hands loading the loops on her belt with slings, stoppers, the other vital paraphernalia. She thought of Cal back on his block, facing down that mob, driving them back with that absurd sword of his, so crazily determined that he had pulled off something that never in a million years should have worked.
Surveying this building, he had that same look.
She thought of her dad in his combat fatigues long ago, teaching her aikido and tae kwon do, telling her that practice and coordination and knowledge only got you so far. In the end, the one with the edge was the guy with the hunger, the one who needed something so badly that nothing, absolutely nothing, would make him stop.
Her dad, in his best moments, had been unstoppable. Rory had never been.
You that guy, Griffin? she wondered, and felt an old hope flare in her, which she labored to smother.
She turned to glare at the structure. Eighty-two stories straight up, with a cherry on top that breathed fire. She sighed. “Hell, if George Willig can do it. .”
“George-?”
“Climbed the World Trade Center in the seventies. But then, he was fucking crazy.”
Cal peered again at the summit, forever away. Or maybe he just needed what was on top to go on living.
“Show me what to do,” Cal said.
Colleen went first, climbing quickly and elegantly, finding purchase for her hands and feet in tiny crevices, irregularities in the slippery, pitted stone surfaces. Cal stood on the ground, paying out the rope tied to her harness. This cord wasn’t for climbing but rather for safety; every twenty feet or so, Colleen rammed spring-loaded devices-little aluminum plugs with plungers like hypodermics-into whatever crack or indentation would hold them, feeding her rope through metal cables in the cams, creating a network of braces to assure she would fall so far and no farther. A belaying device affixed to Cal’s harness would provide the friction to slow the rope in case of a drop and allow the cams to do their work. As her belaying partner, Cal had the easy part of the job-keep a grip on the rope.
After a hundred feet or so, Colleen found an outcrop, a pigeon-fouled, scowling patriarch. She clambered atop it, anchoring herself with four or five cams at different angles. Then she fed her rope through a twin belaying device, and it was Cal’s turn. He started up, tied to her rope, trying his best to replicate the hand and footholds he’d seen her use. The rain-slick surface was treacherous, and he slipped repeatedly, flailing wildly, somehow managing to find a hold and not fall.
It was a battle of inches. The sword banged against his thigh, throwing him off balance, and the banshee wind cascaded up from the corridor of buildings, snatching away his body heat. Before long, his fingers and biceps and throbbing head were shrieking protest.
“Let your legs do the work, not your arms!” Colleen shouted from above, voice nearly lost on the wind. “And try to rest your weight on your skeleton, not your muscles!”
Easy for her to say. But after a time he got the rhythm of the thing and it grew, if not easier, at least manageable. He surrendered his mind to the flow of muscle and bone, levered himself ever higher. He spied his hands, blisters coming on, bloody and raw as they slid up the rough, cold stone. He remembered how Tina’s feet had been like that when she had first gone on pointe.
He reached the outcrop, pulled himself up trembling. Colleen’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight, appraising him. “How you doing?”
“I’m doing it.”
“Are all your family this bonehead stubborn?” she called over the wail of the wind. Beneath her words he heard grudging admiration.
“My mother was. . and my sister.”
Colleen nodded.
They would rest here a moment, then continue. Another fifty feet and another and so on.
Stern could fly. . but they could climb.
The waves were coming faster now and with greater insistence, labor pains of a thing giving birth to itself. The girl lay panting at the edge of the rooftop, her breaths shallow and rapid. Cool light oozed out of her mouth and ears, trickled from the corners of her closed eyes, dripped off her fingertips like blue quicksilver.
Stern had backed some yards off, wary of impeding its progress, and squatted, watching her.
“There’s this philosopher, Hoffer,” he mused, not knowing if she could hear him. “He said, ‘What monstrosities would walk the streets were men’s faces as unfinished as their minds.’ Me, I thought, no-beautiful. Nothing more to hide. .” He caught the smell of ions wafting off her, and something like burning flowers. “I always knew I was different.”
She turned her head to him, opened her eyes against the pain, the liquid current washing over her.
“You knew, too, didn’t you? Well, what if-” Under her gaze, he felt timid, fragile. “What if the lonely days for both of us were gone?”
At the fourteenth floor, Cal discovered the stairwell no longer blocked. He and Colleen took the rest of the journey upward inside the belly of the building, and so were able to recover strength. A service shaft on the top floor led to the roof. Crouching within the low structure, Cal insisted on taking point. So he was the first onto the roof, cracking open the shaft cover, hauling himself across the raised lip and stealthily dropping down.
He was surprised at the jumble that greeted him: a ram-shackle penthouse of wood frame and glass that had seen better days; hulking, water-rotted packing crates; corroded fuel drums; big squares of tarpaper curling leprously across the deck.
His eyes scanned the dark contours, searching. A blue glimmering caught his eye. On the far side of the roof, maybe a hundred feet off, a pale nimbus, and in its midst the frail, prone form of his sister. Backlit by the gleam, turned from him, hunkered the brute shape of what could only be Stern.
Keeping low, Cal crept forward. He could sense Colleen close behind, unslinging her bow. Approaching, he discerned the croon of Stern’s voice on the wind. “Away from this sinkhole, soaring like two damn prehistoric hawks. . to the west.”
Tina rose up on her elbows, the sickly blue radiance like mold glow on her. Her eyes were on Stern, she had not yet seen Cal. “There’s a wave.”
Stern straightened with excitement. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. You saw it, too.”
“To the west and,” Tina’s voice came haltingly, Cal had to strain to hear it, “and the south, like an artery pulsing off it.”
“We’re tuned to the same station, sweetpea. The whatever that caused all this, it’s calling us.” Stern stood and stretched hugely, gazed out over the changed, dark city, the East River beyond. “Soon we’re gonna own the world.”
Another wave crashed upon Tina, and she crumpled with a strangled cry. The St. Elmo’s fire flickered down to a mute guttering that licked at her skin. Her strange aqua eyes found Stern again, held on him as she whispered, “I don’t want your world.”
With a surprising burst of strength, she bolted upright, made a stumbling dash along the edge away from him, toward the open drop between buildings.
Stern gasped in alarm, shot an arm toward her, but she was beyond his reach.
Unmindful of himself, Cal shouted, “Tina, don’t!” Hearing him, she stopped, wheeled around, nearly pitching off the side. But she righted herself, just barely, and sank to one knee.
Ster
n too had swiveled to face Cal. “If you’d shown this much initiative on the job, I’d never have fired you.” He took a single murderous stride toward Cal and drew in a deep, merciless breath.
The arrow caught Stern just above the collarbone, spun him so that the torrent of flame missed Cal by a good three feet. It raked across the tarpaper, igniting it.
Cal dove behind an exhaust outlet, saw that Colleen had managed to take cover behind a pile of crates. Stern rained a flamethrower stream of crackling green hellfire on her.
The crates burst alight in a glorious, mad consumation that no natural source could any longer have kindled, only Stern or some devil-kissed thing like him. Colleen scrabbled back quickly, gained shelter behind a concrete stanchion. Stern closed on her, the endless exhalation blasting the concrete white hot, fiery contrails ricocheting off it. Colleen struggled to reload her crossbow, lift it to aim, but the onslaught was too fierce; it drove her back against the roof’s edge.
Stern swept aside the melted stanchion, exposing Colleen, leaving her defenseless. Cal took a running leap off the exhaust outlet and landed atop Stern’s back. Stern screamed in fury. Twisting and bucking, he shot flame from his mouth like napalm, slashing across the roof. The penthouse caught like an oil-soaked rag, rusty drums detonated in volcanic plumes.
Then Stern’s firestream cut off at last. Stern cursed and spun, trying to reach behind him, fling Cal off. But Cal dug his fingers into the armored ridges of Stern’s shoulders, held on fiercely. The roof was an inferno now, sheets of angry flame dodging about them. Frantically, Cal sought out Colleen and Tina but couldn’t see them as he careened atop Stern.
“Get off me!” Stern shouted as they lurched toward the edge. He leaned sideways like a swooning man and plunged over the side. Cal clutched Stern’s neck, clinging to him. He heard a scream-Tina’s-but it was swallowed in the wind that pummeled him. His stomach rose nauseatingly as the building fell away.
The black street rushed at them. Cal felt a ripple of powerful muscle beneath him, Stern’s great wings unfurled with a snap like a bedsheet, and they were soaring, whirling and swooping, rocketing crazily above Fifth, the dark towers on either side grim cliff faces, dizzying blurs. Stern’s wings pounded as Cal clasped the leathery furrows of skin, tightened his legs about Stern’s massive waist. Harsh, staccato rasps were coming off Stern, beast sounds that might have been crazy, raging laughter.
Abruptly, Stern veered sideways, rammed into a building face, scraping along its edge. The impact flared pain flash-bulb bright behind Cal’s eyes, and he was flung loose, only saving himself by grasping a spur of bone projecting from Stern’s spine. He clambered back, again locked his legs, hunkered down close.
Stern howled, threw himself from side to side against the buildings as they whipped by. The blood was loud in Cal’s ears; he snatched breath as the wind tore past. And then Stern tilted up sharply, soared above the level of the buildings, wings hammering the air as he rose.
Stern slashed through the night sky, climbing fast, dozens, then hundreds of feet above the tallest spire. They were almost dead vertical. Cal grasped Stern as though trying to merge with him as the world fell away.
They pierced a cloud, and Cal felt the damp kiss of fog on his face. The steady rise and fall of Stern’s respiration throbbed beneath him like a huge bellows, and he found himself matching his breathing to Stern’s.
Almost lazily, Stern angled over, dipped below the cloud layer. He was gliding now, banking in a wide, descending spiral.
Then he folded his wings and dived.
The change was so abrupt, it caught Cal unawares. Blood rushed to his head, he fought to keep from blacking out. They were spinning, shrieking downward. Cal felt his body lighten, the pull of gravity ripped away under their savage velocity. In a rush, he saw clearly Stern’s intention to hurtle toward the pavement, then pull up at the last minute, certain the momentum would wrench Cal free, smash him into the asphalt like an offending bug.
Stern was screaming now, a primal howl that matched the wind and challenged it. Cal found himself screaming, too, but he couldn’t hear it over the din, only feel the raw outrage in his throat. Fighting down vertigo and panic, Cal made out a blazing rectangle rising swiftly to meet them, knew it for the roof of the Stark Building.
A sudden, desperate hope seized him. Stern was slowing his rate of spin now, gauging his target. Cal held his breath as the rooftop neared. He locked his legs about Stern more firmly, dared to loosen his arms. He sought out the scabbard at his hip, closed a hand about the wrapped leather binding of the hilt, eased out the sword as they thundered down.
The fiery summit was only yards away now, below and to the west of them. In an instant they would sweep past, and the moment would be lost.
Steeling himself, Cal gripped the sword in both hands, raised it high overhead and-with a cry that surged up from the core of him-rammed it between Stern’s wings.
Stern screeched in anguish and surprise as the blade pierced through hide and meat, splintered bone. Blood geysered up, drenching Cal in a sickening hot stench. Stern’s wings spasmed, flapping reflexively as he curled in on himself, tumbling.
It was the effect Cal had prayed for, as wind resistance slowed Stern’s plunge, at least marginally. He tore the sword free, launched himself clear into space, toward the roof. Stern plummeted like a downed bomber, was lost in the blackness between buildings.
Cal smashed into the lip of the rooftop, went flailing across the surface, blasting through a curtain of green flame and halting thankfully on a bare strip of concrete. Shakily, he rose to his feet, slapping away burning ash, sheathed his blade. A blast furnace roar assaulted him, the heat was appalling.
“Cal!” He spun to see Colleen, smudged but unharmed, thirty feet off near a wall of flame. He ran to her, caught the desperation on her face. She nodded toward the barrier.
Through the flames Cal spied his sister standing on the precipice, the unbroken line of demonfire advancing, backing her inexorably toward the drop.
There was no way to reach her.
Colleen hocked a shaft into her crossbow. Her voice was grief, a whisper. “If you want, I could. .”
“No!” Cal said. He cast about for some answer, some tool. But there was no water, nothing to quench or smother.
Through the leaping, killing flame, Cal locked eyes with his sister, saw terror there and a forgiveness that cut to his soul. She was moving her lips, speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the wail of combustion. Sparks of blue energy spat from her pores, flared swimming across her skin.
And then the fire surged up to her, and she reeled back from it, off the edge into space. Cal screamed. A blue flash like lightning erupted from her, and she was lost from sight. Flame shot off the roof in a long tendril toward where she had been, as though drawn by a vacuum, whipped about in midair, coalesced into a tornado of fire. It wheeled and swelled, drawing fuel from the rooftop, inhaling ravenously.
Like a molten sea emptying out, the fire gushed to the edge, cascaded into the whirlwind until the roof was free of flame, a wasteland of char and smoke. The funnel was spinning faster now, an impossible blur throwing off blazing fingers. It grew brighter and more frenetic, contracting upon itself, squeezing down to a pitiless core, dazzling white. Then it exploded.
The blast knocked Cal off his feet, blinded him. Dazed, the afterimage strobing in his eyes, he groped, found a handhold, the stone still hot, searing him. He dragged himself upright.
He could see a little now. Colleen stood with an odd light shimmering over her, childlike with awe. He followed her gaze past the lip of the building to the space beyond.
There Tina, or what had been Tina, hovered in a nimbus of light, an opalescent play of midnight blue, yellowjacket, carnelian weaving over its surface. Her face seemed broader yet more fine-boned than before, her skin blue-veined marble, lips thin and bloodless. Her ears elongated to fine points that thrust outward through hair that, albino silk, wafted about as if under
water. Her clothes too drifted weightless, the sphere of light about them seemingly a shield from the world’s forces.
Cal thought of the boy he had glimpsed in the tunnels, who had fled at his sight.
Tina was regarding her hands abstractedly, the fingers El Greco long and nail-less, turning them this way and that. Then she glanced up, and her eyes met Cal’s. They were all blue save the vertical pupil, with no whites showing, and blazed such a savage cobalt they seemed lit by an alien fire. Her mouth twisted in a bleak grimace, and he saw to his dismay that her teeth were triangular razors, like a shark’s. What are you? he wondered. She seemed so inhuman.
But then she began to weep, and he knew he had not lost her, at least not fully. He stretched out his arms, coaxing her, and she came floating to him. His arms pierced the boundary of light and then his face, effervescence tingling on his skin. But Tina was solid, and his arms enfolded her as she cried.
Devil night. That’s what old Granny Marxuach had called it, making him tremble and quake back when he was a little pissant on the rancho. All the demons and witches and hell shades take to the sky, so you better dig yourself under the covers and keep tight your soul.
But Papa Sky hadn’t believed any of that crap for the better part of eighty years. Real life had been woolly enough.
His own brand of night had come on him back when he was straight and smooth-skinned and fine, his hair black and gleaming like oil. At first, it had been merely ripples in his vision like smears on glass, then a fog, and then darkness.
Still, it hadn’t been all bad. He hadn’t had to watch himself grow bent and lined and worn, a lank tree that had stood too many storms. And he had his axe, the 1922 Selmer alto sax that was part of his body, that he could make sing like Jesus himself humming. Blind as he was, he could still cut his own reeds, shaving down the Le Blanc bamboo with the straight razor he kept by his bed, in the one-room walkup he’d had since that glory night when he’d subbed for Johnny Hodges with Ellington at the Cotton Club.
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