The Blazing Bridge

by Carter Roy

  “ArmaGideon!” I said. “Am I happy to see you!” During fifth and sixth grade, Gideon and I had defeated hordes of zombies, won the World Cup tons of times, and saved the universe from alien scourges on a weekly basis.

  “Just Gideon,” he said. “I thought you were the pizza delivery guy.”

  “I wish,” Dawkins said from behind me. “I could murder a pizza or two right about now.”

  I walked in through the open door and everyone hurried in behind me. “Oh, hey—you know Greta, right? And that’s Sammy, and Greta’s mom, and the guy with the sword is Jack.”

  The basement was dark except for the light from an enormous sixty-inch television. Frozen on the screen was some sort of attack by living dead creatures.

  “Wow,” Gideon said, staring at Greta. “I can’t believe the smartest girl in school is here, standing inside my game room.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” Greta muttered.

  Gideon eyeballed the sword in Dawkins’ hand as he eased the door shut. “Cool.” Then he noticed the cat Mrs. Sustermann still held over her shoulder. “Okay, Truelove, why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Really sorry to barge in,” I said, thinking fast, “but you’re the only one who can help. We’re playing the heroes in a crazy intense real-world game called the Blood Guard.”

  He made a fist. “Dang, you finally got in on an ARG!” Gideon was eager to play ARGs, alternate reality games set up using real locations. We’d always talked about joining a team and competing but never managed to pull it off—mostly because we were too young and too broke. “So that’s why that guy’s got the fake sword.” He reached out for it.

  Dawkins held it out of reach and said, “Sorry, but this is, um—”

  “It’s a prize he got for completing a side quest,” I said. “Rule is only the victor can use the sword. Just like the cat Mrs. Sustermann is carrying.”

  “The cat was a prize, too?” Gideon asked.

  “It’s a pretty weird ARG,” I said. “Anyway, we need to get off your street. Another team—really vicious players—have set up traps at the ends of the block. They have guns that shoot bolts of lightning, and all we have is that one dinky sword and the cat for our defense.”

  “You guys are so dead!” Gideon blew out a loud breath.

  “I was hoping you could help us this time, and next time, you can play in place of Mrs. Sustermann.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Mrs. Sustermann said, petting Grendel. “This really isn’t my kind of game at all. Monopoly is more my speed.”

  Gideon nodded. “You can count on me, Truelove.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder. “Is the Door still open?”

  “The Door Between Worlds? It will never be closed!” he said, pumping his fist in the air. “But let’s do this fast. I don’t want to miss my pizza.”

  • • •

  At the back of Gideon’s yard was a six-foot-tall wood fence overgrown with ivy. Gideon took us to one corner. “The latch is under all those plants,” he said. “I haven’t been through it in a couple years.”

  Dawkins fished his hand around in the ivy, said, “Ah-ha!” and then something clonked and the corner of the fence swung outward.

  On the other side was a strip of land that ran between the fences of two backyards, between neighboring brownstones, and all the way to the next street.

  We looked at each other. It was pretty narrow.

  “Too tight for me,” Gideon said, shrugging. “But you all should fit if you walk sideways.”

  “Then that is what we shall do. Thank you!” Dawkins turned and scooched through, leading with his sword hand.

  Greta went next, and then her mom, holding Grendel, and then Sammy.

  “That is one sweet setup,” Sammy told Gideon. “I wish we could have hung out and played a few games.” He slipped through the gate.

  “Come back anytime!” Gideon called after him.

  Before I left, I said, “I really owe you, Gideon. You’re saving our lives here.”

  “Aw, it’s just a game,” he said, sweeping his hand through the air.

  I looked down the narrow alley—my friends were already far along—and then grabbed Gideon’s arm. “It’s not a game,” I whispered. “It’s real. And those people out there will kill us. Or you. Promise me you won’t open your door to anyone, and that you won’t go outside for any reason.”

  “Geez, Ronan,” Gideon said, pulling away. “If you don’t want me to join your ARG, you could just say that.”

  From Gideon’s house, his mom called his name.

  “The pizza guy is probably here,” he said.

  “Gideon,” I pleaded, “I’m not kidding around. We’re being hunted. And the people after us are ruthless. Please make sure it really is the pizza guy before you open the door. And if it’s not, call the police.”

  Then I, too, scooted through the Door Between Worlds.

  When I emerged, Dawkins, Greta, her mom, and Sammy were waiting, crouched down between two parked cars. Everyone but the cat looked filthy.

  I’d forgotten how dirty it was in the passageway; my clothes were smeared with greasy soot, and my hands were scratched and bleeding in a few places from the sharp edges of the bricks.

  “What took you so long?” Greta whispered.

  “I had to warn Gideon,” I said. “We can’t have him going outside and bumping into the Bend Sinister.”

  “Good man,” Dawkins said, clapping me on the back. “The coast is clear.” Sixty feet away were the subway’s half-green, half-white globe lights that I’d noticed on the drive earlier.

  Within seconds, we had descended the stairs and were off the street.

  “But what about Diz?” Greta asked.

  “What is a Diz?” her mother asked.

  “A person,” Greta said. “You’d like her.”

  “She’s hell on wheels, is our Diz,” Dawkins said, examining the ceiling-to-floor turnstiles. “She can take care of herself.”

  “She’s like you, right?” Sammy asked. “An Overseer?”

  Dawkins shook his head. “If you mean in terms of my particular healing talents … no. Diz is a rank-and-file Blood Guard. If she gets killed, she stays that way.”

  Mrs. Sustermann raised an eyebrow. “Don’t all people who get killed ‘stay that way’?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Dawkins said, fussing with the turnstile.

  “So you keep saying.”

  “Mom,” Greta said. “I’ll explain later.”

  “These spinning cage things are beyond me,” Dawkins said. “How does anyone hop the turnstiles anymore?”

  “They don’t,” Mrs. Sustermann said. She held up a flimsy plastic MetroCard. “But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.”

  Our end of the station was empty, but there were twenty or so people scattered along the platform, and way down at the other end a half-dozen old guys in mismatched suit jackets and bowlers started warbling “You Are My Sunshine.”

  “What’s that about?” Sammy asked.

  “Just some folks singing for spare change,” Mrs. Sustermann said, sitting down on a bench. Greta sat beside her, and Sammy went over to study the maps and the white-tiled walls.

  “So my dad must have told the Bend Sinister,” I said, stepping closer to Dawkins. “Before he was thrown out, he must have told them about Greta.”

  “Else why would they show up here, right?” Dawkins whispered. “Except … there are hundreds of Bend Sinister in the city. Why wouldn’t they have kidnapped Greta’s mom before now?”

  A gentle wind began to blow through the station—air forced ahead of a train. “The subway’s coming,” I said.

  “And not a moment too soon,” Dawkins said. “We managed to pull this one out of the fire, thanks to your pal Gideon back there.”

  At that moment, three pairs of black-suited legs appeared at the top of the steps, slowly descending until we were face-to-face through the turnstile
gate with three Bend Sinister agents—the bald man and the two women from the heliport.

  The bald guy was eating a slice of pizza.

  I stepped up to the black metal bars. “Where’d you get that?”

  He chewed and smiled and said nothing.

  Dawkins hooked his arm across my chest and pulled me back. “No need to stand so close, Ronan.”

  The redhead raised her hands and began whispering something, and the curved chrome bars of the turnstile cage started to glow. How long until they were soft enough to bend aside?

  The other, dark-haired woman wiggled her fingers in a wave. “I’d hoped we would meet again before the night ended—and here you are!”

  “Would love to stay and chat,” Dawkins said, raising his voice over the screech of the arriving train. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the long silver subway car. “But we don’t want to miss our ride.”

  “Tell me,” asked the woman, reaching forward and bending one of the turnstile bars backward, “why are you and Head Truelove so interested in the Sustermann woman?”

  “Why are you so interested?” Dawkins asked.

  A bing-bong sounded, the doors opened, and all of us stepped inside the car.

  “Because you are!” the bald man shouted. He and the dark-haired woman bent back one bar after another, their hands sizzling as they grasped the hot metal.

  And then the doors closed, and the train rolled forward, slowly picking up speed until it carried us away into the dark tunnel.

  CHAPTER 5

  A SONG IN HIS HEART, A SWORD IN HIS HAND

  I collapsed into a seat right by the door, relieved that we’d escaped.

  Dawkins eased into the seat next to me, care fully slipping his cutlass out of sight beneath our bench.

  Greta’s mom plopped onto the three-seat bench across from us, and Greta sat right next to her mom. They put their heads together over the cat, who curled up on the seat between them.

  “That is the calmest kitty I have ever seen,” Dawkins said.

  “Grendel can be a monster now and then,” Mrs. Sustermann said, scratching the cat’s ears. “But generally he is at peace with the world.”

  “This subway is kind of janky,” Sammy commented, eyeballing the walls, poles, and advertisements.

  “This is an old car,” I said. “The newer ones are tons nicer.”

  The seats were made from this ugly orange plastic and came in three-seaters that hugged the walls, and two-seaters that stuck out into the center, forming big Ls like the saddest bunch of Tetris blocks in the world. I stared down at the floor, which was made out of a single giant piece of tan linoleum and had all sorts of disgusting stains on it.

  We were in the empty front half of the car. Nearby were an old couple with a pushcart full of groceries and a couple of older teens, and at the back were three women who talked loud and laughed a lot.

  “Mission accomplished, guys!” Sammy spun around on the metal pole between us. “We got out of there and no one got hurt.”

  Was that true? I couldn’t get that slice of pizza out of my mind.

  Just then, the train tilted and the wheels shrieked through a turn. The fluorescents above us stuttered and went dark. A second later, they came back on.

  Sammy pointed at a red wooden handle dangling from the ceiling. Behind it was a sign reading EMERGENCY BRAKE. “Does that old-school thing really stop the train?”

  “Let’s not find out,” Dawkins said. “Leave it alone.”

  “Okay, okay! I’m going to go check out the rest of the car,” Sammy said, then swung from pole to pole down to where the three women sat.

  But I was barely watching. I have never felt so guilty in my life. “I’m worried about Gideon,” I said.

  “We don’t know that anything bad happened to him,” Dawkins whispered. “Just because someone’s eating—”

  “Really? It’s just a big coincidence?”

  He looked away. “Of course not. I hope that he and his family are okay. He helped us escape, and our leaving the Bend Sinister at his door was poor thanks.”

  “Some escape. What if they run after us?” I asked. “I was on a train before and a Bend Sinister guy chased it. He ran like sixty miles an hour. And subways are tons slower than that train.”

  “Could happen,” Dawkins admitted, “but we had a head start, and running along train tracks in a dark tunnel is no easy task. And they’ll have no idea if we got off at any other stop along the way … such as this one.”

  The brakes whined sharply as the train rattled into a station. A bunch of noisy young people got on at the back. Then the doors closed and we were off again.

  “Did you catch that last thing the Hand said through his surrogate?” Dawkins asked.

  Again the car was plunged into darkness. And then the overhead lights flickered back on.

  “They came after Mrs. Sustermann because we did,” I said quietly.

  “So that group now likely thinks she is a Pure.”

  “That’s good, right?” I asked. “They’re confused.”

  “No, Ronan, that’s bad. What if they kidnap her, or kill her, or bonk her over the head with the Damascene ’Scope?”

  I stared across at Greta and her mom. They looked so happy, forehead to forehead, like two girls at a slumber party telling each other secrets. Greta thought she and her mom were safe. But all we’d done was double the amount of trouble coming their way.

  “And my dad is still out there, and he for sure knows.”

  “Right. And he’s likely desperate to nab Greta as a replacement soul for the Pure he lost—the one he was supposed to deliver to Evangeline Birk and the Bend Sinister.” He slapped my knee. “But don’t look so glum, Ronan. We’ll meet up with Diz and go hide out in Agatha’s swanky penthouse apartment as planned. And then tomorrow the rest of the Blood Guard will arrive, and everything will be hunky-dory.”

  The more confident Dawkins seemed, the less I believed him.

  The train slowed into another station and a group of people got off our car. I craned my head around to watch through the window, waiting for those Bend Sinister agents to pop up on the platform.

  But they never did. Soon the train got moving again.

  When I turned back around, Sammy was right in front of me.

  “I checked out the car in front of this one. Just a bunch of sleepy people and an old guy with ratty dreads strumming a guitar and singing ‘No Woman, No Cry.’”

  “If you don’t mind, Sammy,” Dawkins said, “please stay in this car. I’d rather we not lose you.”

  “You have my word that I will stay in this car,” Sammy said, crossing his heart with his index finger. And then he swung from center pole to center pole all the way to the back door.

  You’re missing something, you idiot, I thought, remembering my dream.

  “Why?” I wondered aloud. “Why does it matter if my dad brings a soul to this Birk lady? What is she going to do with it—start a collection?” I rubbed the scar on my palm and remembered the open aluminum packing case in Agatha’s greenhouse, the freezing-cold Conceptacle inside that held Flavia’s soul. “The whole point of their plan was to take souls out of circulation so that they can’t be reincarnated, right? So why carry it around? Why not just dump the Conceptacle into a pit where it won’t ever be found?”

  The door at the far end of the car opened, and both Dawkins and I looked up. The six old guys in bowler hats paraded in.

  Five carried canes, and all of them were dressed in mismatched suits, some of the coats turned inside out. A couple seemed ashamed to be performing for coins and stared down at their feet. But the one in the front removed his hat, held it between his hands, and announced, “We are going to sing a song for you tonight, one you probably all know.” He cleared his throat.

  Dawkins turned back to me. “That is a very good question. Why did your dad bring that Pure soul to the Glass estate? Why not leave it somewhere safe? We’d been thinking he was just being foolish, but tha
t’s … too easy.”

  I shook my head. “My dad is a lot of things, but foolish isn’t one of them.”

  “So he brought it deliberately. Why?”

  The man at the back of the group, his head dropped against his chest, flattened his hand against his ratty brown coat and started making noises that sounded like a bass guitar. The other four hummed along as the leader began. The song had strange lyrics—about a shark biting someone and blood billowing, and it took me a full verse before I recognized the tune.

  Sammy slid into the pair of seats facing us. “What is this weird song? They should go back to ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”

  “It’s called ‘Mack the Knife,’” I said. “It’s a song about a murderer from an old German opera. My dad played classical stuff like that all the time.”

  As they sang, they shuffled forward in tiny half steps, like most subway buskers, moving slowly so that they didn’t reach the other end of the car before their song ended. Two of the men shook plastic cups full of change. A few people dropped in coins, but almost everyone else ignored them.

  Greta’s mom slowly swung her foot in time.

  The train braked into another station, the doors opened, and the men froze in place while passengers got on and off.

  That’s a weird move, I thought.

  But then they picked up the song again right where they’d stopped once the train departed.

  The fluorescents overhead buzzed and blinked off, then buzzed again and came back on.

  “I really wish the lights would stop doing that,” I said.

  “It just means the cars went over a switch or a gap in the third rail,” Greta said. “Like when you enter a tunnel.”

  “Of course you would know that,” I said. Greta may be a Pure and my friend, but she was also the smartest student at my school and sometimes kind of annoying about it.

  Greta shrugged. “I can’t help it that I actually learn things.”

  “So we’re in a tunnel now?” Sammy asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’re somewhere under the East River.”