by Wen Spencer
Seth felt sick as he realized what it meant. "Oh God, the Wickers have Joshua! I think they have a leash on him."
He was going to lose Joshua just like he'd lost his little brothers. He shouldn't have left Joshua alone at Decker's. Seth knew that the vampire would be asleep during the day. The boy might be able to fight but he had no idea what he was up against.
"Call Haji and Leung." Jack braked hard to pull into a maintenance vehicle turnaround. "Tell them to meet us in Boston. If they get on the next plane, they'll be there in an hour or two. Where are the Wickers holding Joshua?"
"Boston Commons." Seth shifted his focus off of Joshua to his location. What he found made him gasp in dismay. "Oh no, there's a tear right beside him."
"A breach?"
"The start of one. It can't be a coincidence. The Wickers must know a way to create one."
"Why would they do that?" Jack snapped. "They might be resistant to breach-borne but they're not immune."
"They're putting up wards. They'll be standing in the eye of a storm. We'd have to wade through breach-borne to get to them."
"We? No. No. No we!" Jack cried. "You can't go after him, Seth. You can't risk yourself to save him."
"We can't wait for the Thanes. It's the Sunday after Thanksgiving. They're not going to be able to get on a plane." Seth swept his hand to take in the bumper to bumper traffic. "They're not going to be able to get here quickly!"
"Call Elise and Decker. They can get there even before we can."
"Decker is asleep." Seth paused to verify that. Whoever took Joshua might have killed Decker. No, the vampire was still in his underground bunker. "We can't wait for Decker. The Wicker created the breach but they can't control it. It's going to tear open and dump breach-borne all over Boston. If enough people are caught up in it, we're not going to be able to save the city. There will be thousands of monsters within hours of the breach opening, if not hundreds of thousands."
"What the hell are they thinking?" Jack whispered.
It was a trap exclusively meant for him, Seth realized. Anything else, the Thanes would wade in alone. The nearby bloodshed would rip the breach open and the Thanes wouldn't be able to close it. Seth would have to be part of the battle. Obviously the Wickers thought Joshua was his heir. They couldn't control Seth or Jack because the wolves that created them had been cremated long ago. The Wickers must believe that if they killed Seth while Joshua was on a leash that they would have control of Boston. If Joshua became prince, then he could create a pack of wolves devoted to him. The problem was that Joshua was part of the New York pack. He wouldn't inherit Boston; Jack would.
It left Seth with a decision of charging in, risking death, and sealing the breach now before anyone died, or waiting until hundreds or thousands of innocent people were dead.
It didn't seem like much of choice.
What had happened three years ago? Did his family really die because of some natural event that no one could have controlled, not even his father? Or did the Wickers tear open a test breach in preparation for today? Or was that a first attempt that went horribly wrong? Had they planned to kidnap him and skin his father? Was that why the king wanted Seth and his little brothers in New York?
The idea of his father butchered like Samuels sickened Seth. He tried not to think about it but the thought loomed huge. He could have been in Joshua's place. Alone. Trapped. Scared.
The Wickers' secret lair had a several hidden passageways leading to it, all but one of them guarded by now active constructs. Why was one left clear? Were there more Wickers racing to join the two holding Joshua captive?
"Speed up." Seth explained the open passage to Jack. "If we get to the entrance before the remaining Wickers, we can just walk in without fighting our way through constructs."
* * *
Seth had never closed a breach before. The king had explained how to do it in great detail. He'd felt Alexander close up breaches within Boston, but that was while Seth was still in New York, watching from afar. Fear roiled in his stomach as they reached Boston Commons an hour later. Jack wedged the Land Rover into a tight parking space a block from the park. Elise waited on the sidewalk, her Jeep illegally double-parked with government tags displayed in the front window.
The breach was still small and new. Magic welled up like blood from a fresh, shallow wound. The power hadn't found a host yet, but that was only a matter of time. Seth could sense reality around the breach weakening. At any moment the small tear could rip open into a huge massive wound. Magic would flood out, infecting everything in its path not firmly rooted in another power source. The wolves and Elise, being a Virtue, would be safe. Everything from mice on up would be taken over. Changed. Twisted. Filled with the insatiable need to devour life.
Seth could feel all the people moving through the Commons on street level, in the underground garage and the nearby subway stations. Thousands of holiday shoppers surged through the area, unaware of the danger hidden under their feet. It would be a bloodbath.
"It's a virtual maze underground." Seth waved to indicate the Commons that stretched several blocks in all directions. "They've got Joshua in a cage in the bottom floor of the parking garage. The breach is within feet of him. The level isn't connected to the upper floors. There's several ways into the space from surrounding buildings and the subway. The most direct way seems to be from the basement of the Masonic Lodge. There's stairs heading down into an underground hallway."
"Wait." Elise put out a hand as if to catch Seth by the wrist. She remembered who he was and stopped herself before actually touching him. "Let me go first. The power of the Lord will protect me."
Seth locked down on a growl of impatience. It would be stupid for him to blindly charge into the fight. If he was killed, Jack would be deep in alpha amnesia for a week or more and unable to close the breach.
Elise paused to kneel in the grass, daggers down and touching the ground. She'd chosen an area already in shadows, screened from the sidewalks. "Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; he is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge. Amen."
Seth felt the power gather around her. The area brightened noticeably as ghost wings flared from her back. Oddly the people passing by had glanced her way as she knelt, but as she prayed, they paid less and less attention to her until she seemed invisible to them.
The Masonic Lodge was a huge stone building dating from the turn of the last century. It been built to impress, all stone and ornate details. It had multiple levels of basements, the first level of sub-basement were two large dining rooms.
The Wickers had puppets standing guard in the lowest level basement. It was a true basement filled with odd bric-a-brac. The men were armed with impromptu weapons of hockey sticks and butcher knives. Elise ghosted past them, unnoticed. Seth and Jack followed in her wake, protected by whatever magic surrounded her.
"That's a little creepy," Jack whispered. "I'm not used to being ignored so blatantly."
"I wish I could always be that invisible," the Grigori murmured.
Seth led to a doorway on the far wall. The large ornate door had once been an important entry. It had been updated recently with a keypad lock.
"This feels like a trap," Jack said.
"I need to get close enough to touch the breach." Seth ripped the door open, shattering the frame around the dead bolt. "Quickly. We're running out of time."
Stairs led down to a narrow stone lined hallway. At the end, a modern steel door opened into a massive low-slung space of the Boston Common Garage.
The scent of blood hung thick in the air, a powerful wave of coppery warmth. It washed over them as they came through the door. Under it was the taint of something bitter, dark and oily. The hair on the back of Seth's neck rose and he found himself growling.
The three Wickers stood within pentagrams with warding glyphs scribed at each point of the star. There was witch and two warlock
s. The older male wore Samuels' skin, the skull perched upon his head with the body draped down his back. Flanking the Wickers were two large wooden cages. A black wolf crouched within one, silent and watching. Joshua gave no sign of how sane he remained. The second cage held four piglets. The animals ran in wild circles within the cage, squealing in fear.
It was the wet black breach, though, that caught and held Seth's attention. It smeared across the floor like an oil-slick between them and the Wickers. The air above visibly roiled, the magic spilling out distorting the light. At the moment the breach was only an inch wide and five feet long.
"Seth!" Both Jack and Elise cried as Seth raced to the black opening.
"I need to close this!" Seth knelt beside the breach. It looked like an optical illusion, the blackness hovering inches from the ground. It was growing larger even as he reached for it. Magic spilled out of it, shimmering like heat across the concrete. His body reacted as if he'd plunged his hand into boiling water. His hand jerked back without his conscious control. He steeled himself and reached again. The sensation of harm remained, but he knew it wasn't heat he was feeling. There were no words to describe it. His entire being, though, rebelled against it. He fought to keep his hand within the sheer nothingness, blindly searching.
"Let the pigs loose, Heath!" the witch cried. "Before he can close the breach."
The vines of the cage unraveled, spilling out the piglets. The animals fled blindly straight toward the breach. The air thickened and darkened and surged toward the pigs. Their squeals deepened as the magic took the pigs. They shimmered darkly as they changed form, growing massive. Their ridged backs became taller than a man, covered with a course gray hair. A dozen massive, razor-sharp tusks grew in haphazard patterns. Some were on their lower jawbone. Others on their snout. A scattering grew out of their cheeks and across their skulls and down their spines. Extra pairs of beady red eyes appeared, each monstrous boar growing a different number.
Seth ignored the boars, trusting Jack to protect him. He had to stay focused on the breach. His fingertips brushed over a strand as fine as spider silk. There! He caught hold of the thread and pulled to snap it. The line went taunt, digging deep into his fingers.
One of the boars charged toward Seth. Jack tackled it to the ground. They rolled away, growling and squealing. The vines from the boar's cage slithered toward Seth, trying to wrap around him.
Elise slashed at the tendrils. "Hurry! We're overmatched here!"
Seth yanked with all his strength. The thread snapped. He tapped the Source, pulling power to him, flooding the area with his magic to counter the breach.
A boar slammed into Elise, ramming her into a support column. The concrete shattered from the impact. Her ghostly wings vanished. She started to slump to the ground, unconscious.
Seth caught hold of the boar before it could gore her. It was like wrestling with a truck.
"Seth, watch out!" Jack shouted.
There was the thunder of an assault rifle on full auto fire. Jack fell as a storm of bullets plowed through him.
"Jack!" Seth flung the boar away.
The bullets punched through Jack, spraying Seth with blood as they exited Jack's body. They'd been silver, though, and left behind poisoned wounds that wouldn't heal until they were cleansed with Earthblood. Jack fell to the ground. His cousin flailed, trying to get up but too wounded to rise. A second boar charged toward him.
"No!" Seth intercepted the boar. As he attempted to kill the monster, the vines from the piglet's cage snaked around his ankles.
I've killed Jack, Seth thought. We're going to die here and with us, all of Boston.
55: Decker
The house was too quiet. Decker woke full of misgivings. What had happened while he'd been dead to the world? In the short time that Joshua had been living with him, they'd established a pattern. Joshua was always in the kitchen, waiting for him, at sunset. The boy was always surprisingly loud. Why was the house so quiet? Had the prince decided to take his brother back to New York City?
Decker hurried up the basement steps, his worry growing as he discovered the kitchen dark and empty. The newly uncluttered rooms echoed loudly as he called "Joshua?" There was nothing left in the house to mute how empty his life was without the boy.
Even as the echo died away, someone knocked loudly on the front door.
It was the purple-haired girl with the spirit guide. She yelped in surprise when Decker flung open the door and hissed at her.
"Where is Joshua?" Decker growled.
"The Wickers took him!" She held out a piece of paper that shook violently as she trembled in fear. "I think. I'm not sure. Marie was at the helm at the time. The bakery guy was pretty rattled but he said something about there being a freaking big black wolf that was wrapped up by some kind of monster snake. I think it was Joshua. I think the Wickers took him. Marie left a note but I haven't had time to translate it."
He snatched the piece of paper. It was a pastry bag with French handwriting in smooth ballpoint ink on the back. "My dearest Silas. Those foul witches tried to take my little Winifred with a fetch. Of course I couldn't allow it. Unfortunately, I could not remove it myself so I asked my gallant Chevalier to bring your young wolf companion to my rescue. Alas, in freeing me, he was snared and the fetch carried him off. He is being held within the tunnels under the park with the darling Frog Pond. Godspeed. Marie."
That trollop, Joshua wasn't hers put at risk!
There was a postscript that he nearly missed. "They were after my Winnie in order to find your residence. I believe that is what those from the Far East would call karma." A second post script added, "I just love these new pens. No more ink splatter, blotches or smears!"
He crumbled the note with a snarl.
The girl fled down the steps to her purple motorized bicycle, the oddly named Vespa.
"I didn't know what to do!" the girl called. "Marie left me at the bakery with the baker whimpering hysterically about giant wolves and wooden snakes and gateways to hell. I have no idea what really happened. I've been waiting for you to wake up so I could give you the note."
Where was the prince? He was to return to New York City that morning, nearly four hours away. Surely he knew that his brother was taken.
Decker struggled to clear his mind and focus on the prince. Where was Joshua's brother? Southwest and distant. Possibly still in New York City. It could take hours for the prince to drive to Boston.
If the Wickers had tried to kidnap Winnie to gain access to Decker's house, then they would be expecting an angry vampire. Most likely they would have something prepared to kill Decker if he came thundering down on them.
Decker had been faintly hoping for the release of death. If he found it saving Joshua, so be it.
* * *
Decker had been a hundred and fifty years old when he saw his first train. It had been a massive roaring thing, bellowing out black smoke and steam. It had seemed like a magical thing to him, chained to the ground, yet rushing along at impossible speeds. It had been the first hint of how lost he'd feel as mankind developed more and more advanced technology. Children now played with toys that went faster than that first locomotive.
He'd read about the proposed Tremont Street Subway in the Philadelphia newspapers as he approached his second century on Earth. It was the first of its kind in North America and thus big news. He could not wrap his head around the idea of a vehicle propelled simply by electricity until they started to appear in Philadelphia.
The two original stations of the Tremont Street Subway served Boston Commons. Park Street was a surprise rabbit hole, covered by a small brownstone head house with a dark tin roof. It looked like a public restroom from the distance. The Boylston head house was at the far other end of the Common, at the intersection of Boylston and Tremont Street. The squeal of train wheels on steel rails as the Green Line turned a tight corner underground betrayed the presence of the hidden trains.
In the nearly sixty years that he'd lived in Bo
ston, the tunnels servicing the stations had constantly been altered, expanded and closed as the subway grew and merged with other rail lines. He did not have to imagine the maze of resulting underground passage ways; he and the several generations of Grigori had climbed through them countlessly, hunting monsters. Saul. Lauretta. Elise.
The dark unused spaces at the heart of the city were frequent spawn points. The Grigori needed him to find the beasts within the maze. Needed him. Used him. Left him alone when they went back to their uncluttered houses. He had lived centuries repeating the cycle with each new generation. As toddlers they loved him utterly. As they grew older and more aware of the world and their place within, they came to distrust him. They despised him when they were idealistic teenagers. Hard reality sometimes changed them for the better; they grew to love him once again. Sometimes, though, it only made them hate him more, hence his exile from Philadelphia.
Of the New World Tribes, he'd only known the Virtues. They'd protected him from the Powers and guarded the Dominions, who could not defend themselves if he'd attacked them. They shared the hunt, sometimes their meals and occasionally their bed, but never the little mundane things of life. Saul had never taken him shopping. Lauretta had never done laundry with him. Elise never asked him to pick a paint color.
He was starting his fourth century on Earth and he'd just discovered the simple joys. Joshua had lived less than eighteen years. Decker wasn't going to let some power-hungry witch steal a full happy life from his puppy.
He boarded the Red Line at Harvard Square. The car emptied out within minutes of him stepping onto it. His cold anger made the rest flee the train completely at the next stop. No one dared to board the next three stops. He crossed the Charles River alone and dove under the city. Minutes later, the train rattled and squealed into the Park Street Station.
He paused on the brick platform to take his bearings. The high arched ceiling had not changed in all the years that he had lived in Boston. The lighting now was bright as daylight, stunning after the darkness of the night. Behind him the doors slid closed on the subway train and it rattled away, leaving him wholly alone.