“Wait a second. Who needs who?”
“They”—she looked out the window at the passing crowds—“need us. We’re the immune system for our species, Cal. Like those kick-ass T-cells and B-cells you always told me about, we get activated by an invasion. New-strainers are just zombies, vampires. But those of us with the old disease, the carrier strain, we’re soldiers.”
My mind spun, trying to reconcile what Sarah was saying with what I’d seen Morgan doing, spreading the disease haphazardly, enlisting hordes of cats. “But why is this a secret? I mean, why didn’t this come up in my Night Watch courses? Does Dr. Rat know about it? Or Records?”
“It’s older than Records. Older than science. Even older than New York. So the carriers kept it a secret from the Night Watch humans, Cal. It’s not going to be pleasant for them, the next few months. But we need all the soldiers we can get. Fast.”
“So you’re spreading the disease on purpose?” I asked, but Sarah’s eyes had left mine, looking over my right shoulder, a pleasant smile filling her face.
A hand fell on me. “Uh, hey, Cal. Sorry I’m late.”
I looked up. Lace was staring down at Sarah, a little unsure.
“Oh, hi.” I cleared my throat, realizing I’d waited too long; the inevitable collision had happened. “This is Sarah. My ex.”
“And you must be Lacey.” Sarah extended her hand.
“Uh, yeah. Lace, actually.” They shook.
“Hot stuff, coming through!” said Rebecky, sliding a plate of pepper steak in front of me. Lace sat down next to me, wary of the woman across from her. Rebecky’s gaze moved among us, intrigued by the obvious discomfort of it all.
“Coffee, honey?” she asked Lace.
“Yeah, please.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Me three,” Sarah added. “And another hamburger.”
“And one of those.” Lace pointed at my pepper steak. “I’m starving.”
“Pepper steak?” I said. “Oh, crap.”
“Hey, it’s not against the law, dude,” Lace muttered as Rebecky walked away.
“What isn’t against the law?” Sarah asked, licking her fingers.
“Eating meat,” Lace said. “Sometimes people change, you know?”
Sarah smiled. “Oh. Used to be a vegetarian, did you?”
I started in ravenously on my own pepper steak. Otherwise, I was going to faint. “She was. Until recently.”
Sarah looked from Lace to me, then giggled. “You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you, Cal?”
“It was Cornelius.”
“Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” Lace asked.
Sarah sighed. “Well, Lacey, things are about to get complicated.”
Lace raised her hands. “Don’t look at me, girl. I never even kissed this guy. In fact, I’m really pissed at him right now.”
“Oh, poor Cal!” Sarah said. Then she added in a cruel baby voice, “Did kitty beat you to it?”
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Lace said.
I dropped my fork to the table. Things were spinning out of control, and I had to do something to unspin them. Most important, I had to get Lace out of here, or she would wind up in Montana.
Sweeping Sarah’s bottle of pills into my pocket, I pushed Lace out of the booth and dragged her toward the door.
“What the hell!” she shouted.
“Cal,” Sarah called. “Wait a second!”
“We have to leave,” I hissed to Lace. “She’s one of them.”
“What, an old girlfriend? I could tell that.” Lace paused, looking back at Sarah. “Oh, you mean …?”
“Yes!”
“Whoa, dude.”
As we reached the door, I glanced back. Sarah wasn’t following us, just watching our retreat with an amused expression. She pulled out a cell phone but paused to wave it at me: shoo. For some reason—old loyalty? lingering insanity? — she was giving us time to get away.
The street in front of us was thronged with pedestrians, but I didn’t smell any predators among the crowd—just lots of humans crammed together, ready for infection and slaughter. I kept us moving, tugging Lace along in one random direction after another.
“Where are we going, Cal?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to get out of here. They know about you.”
“Know what about me? That you told me all your Night Watch stuff?”
I didn’t answer for a moment, trying to think, but Lace pulled me to a stop. “Cal? Tell me the truth, or I’ll have to kill you.”
I glanced behind her—still no signs of pursuit. “They sent Sarah to find me.”
“And you told her about me?”
“No! You did. When you ordered that pepper steak!” I tried to get Lace moving again, but she pulled me to a stop.
“What the hell? What’s pepper steak got to do with this?”
“You’re starving, right? Feeling faint? And you’ve been craving meat all day…”
She didn’t answer, just stood there with eyes narrowed, my words finally sinking in. “Um, earth to Cal: You and I didn’t sleep together.”
“Believe me, I know. But you see, there’s this new strain… I mean, turns out it’s an old strain, and it has to do with cats. They’re the vectors we have to worry about now.”
Unsurprisingly, this explanation didn’t alter Lace’s perplexed expression. She just stood there staring back at me. A few passersby bumped into her, but the contact didn’t register. Finally, after ten long seconds, she spoke slowly and clearly. “Are you saying that your fat-ass cat has turned me into a vampire?”
“Um, maybe?” I coughed. “But I can test you, and we’ll know for sure.”
“Dude, you are so dead.”
“Fine, but wait until we find someplace to test you.”
“Someplace like where?”
“Someplace dark.”
Finding pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy at noon. In fact, finding pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy anytime.
I considered going to Lace’s apartment, but if the Watch was looking for us, they were as likely to start there as anywhere. I also thought about renting a hotel room and yanking the curtains closed, but if Lace was infected, there was no point throwing away money. We might be on the run for a while.
The pills were still clutched in my hand; even if Lace was infected, we could control the parasite. I could analyze the garlic-and-mandrake compound and keep her human. We could escape whatever the old carriers had planned for the end of civilization.
“What about a movie theater?” Lace asked.
“Not dark enough.” The light from exit signs always drives me crazy during movies. “We need cave darkness, Lace.”
“Cave darkness? Not a lot of caves in Manhattan, Cal.”
“You’d be surprised.” My nerves twitched as a trembling came through the soles of my boots. We were standing on the sidewalk grates over Union Square station. I pulled her toward an entrance.
I swiped us through a turnstile and tugged Lace down the stairs and to the very end of the platform, pointing into the darkness ahead. “That way.”
“On the tracks? Are you kidding?”
“There’s an old abandoned station at Eighteenth. I’ve been there before. Plenty dark.”
She leaned over the tracks; a small and scampering thing darted among discarded coffee cups.
“The rats won’t bite you,” I said. “Promise.”
“Forget it.”
“Lace, we subway-hacked all the time in Peep Hunting 101.”
She pulled away, glanced at the couple on the platform watching us, and hissed, “Yeah, well, I didn’t sign up for that class.”
“No, you didn’t. You didn’t sign up for any of this. But we have to know if you’re infected.”
Lace stared at me, her eyes gleaming darkly, like wet ink. “What happens if I am a vampire? Do you, like, vanquish me or something?”
“Y
ou’re not a vampire, Lace, just sick, maybe. And this strain is easy to control. Look.” I pulled the pills from my pocket and rattled them. “We’ll get out of the city. Otherwise, they’ll put you into treatment. In Montana.”
“Montana?”
I nodded, pointing down the dark tunnel. “The choice is yours.”
The 6 train rattled into view, and we waited as the platform cleared. I tugged Lace into the security camera blind spot, just next to the access ladder down to the tracks.
She looked down the tunnel. “And you can cure me?”
“Not cure. Control the parasite. Make you like me.”
“What, all superstrong and stuff?”
“Yeah. It’ll be great!” After the cannibal stage was over.
“But the disease will kill me eventually, right?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. After a few hundred years.”
Lace blinked. “Dude. Major consolation prize.”
We ran down the middle of the tracks.
“Don’t touch that,” I said, pointing down at the wood-covered rail running between our track and the next one over. “Unless you want to get fried.”
“The famous third rail?” Lace said. “No problem. I’m a lot more worried about trains.”
“The local just passed. We’ve got a few minutes.”
“A few!”
“The abandoned station’s only four blocks away, Lace. I’ll know if the rails start rumbling. Supersenses and everything.” I pointed between the columns that held up the streets over our heads, the safe spots. “And if a train does come, just stand there.”
“Oh, yeah, that looks totally safe.”
We charged down the tunnel, and I tried not to notice that Lace wasn’t stumbling over the tracks and rubbish, as if the darkness didn’t bother her. But it wasn’t cave dark yet. Work lights dangled around us, casting our manic and fractured shadows against the tracks.
The express train swerved into view ahead, taking the slow curve with one long screaming complaint. The cold white eyes of its headlights flickered through the steel columns like the light of an old movie projector. In the strobing light, I saw that Lace had come to a halt. The train was on the express track; it wouldn’t hit us, but the approaching shriek of metal wheels had paralyzed her.
The wall of metal flew past, whipping Lace’s hair around her face and throwing sparks at our feet. Light from the passing windows flickered madly around us, and a few passengers’ faces shot by, looking down with astonished expressions. I put my arm around Lace, the rhythm of the train’s passage shuddering through our bodies. Its roar battered the air, loud enough to force my eyelids shut.
When the sound had faded into the distance, I asked, “Are you okay?”
She blinked. “Dude, that was loud!”
Lace’s voice sounded thin in my ringing ears. “No kidding. Come on, before another train comes.”
She nodded dumbly, and I pulled her the rest of the way to the abandoned station.
The Eighteenth Street station opened up in 1904, the same time as the rest of the 6; part of that turn-of-the-century dig-fest, I suppose.
Back then, all subway trains were five cars long. In the 1940s, with the city’s population booming, they were doubled up to ten, which left the old subway platforms a couple hundred feet too short. During the station-stretching project, a few in-between stations like Eighteenth were deemed not worth the trouble and shut down.
The Transit Authority may have forgotten these underground vaults, but they are remembered by a host of urban adventurers, graffiti artists, and other assorted spelunkers. For the next sixty years, the abandoned stations were spray-painted, vandalized, and made the subject of drunken dares, urban myths, and fannish Web sites. They are tourist stops for amateur subterraneans, training grounds for the Night Watch—the twilight zone between the human habitat and the Underworld.
I pulled Lace up onto the dark and empty platform. Six decades of graffiti swirled around us, the once-bright spray paint darkened by accumulated grime. Crumbling mosaic signs spelled out the street number and pointed toward exits that had been sealed for decades. As Lace steadied herself at the platform’s edge, she looked around with wide eyes, and my heart sank. It was awfully close to cave darkness here; a normal person should have been waving a hand in front of her face.
“So what now?” she said.
“This way.” Deciding to give her a real test, I led her to the door of the men’s bathroom, a relic of sixty years ago. The broken remains of a sink clung to one wall, and the broken wooden doors of the stalls leaned at haphazard angles. The last smells of disinfectant had faded; all that remained was warmish subway air filled with the scent of rats and mold and decay. Distant work lights reflected dimly from the grimy tiles. Even with my fully formed peep vision, I could hardly see.
I pointed into the last stall. “Can you read that?”
She peered unerringly at the one legible line among the tangled layers of graffiti. For a moment, she was silent, then said softly, “This is how it all started. Reading something written on a wall.”
“Can you see it?”
“It says, Take a shit, Linus.’ ”
I closed my eyes. Lace was infected. The parasite must have been working overtime, gathering reflective cells behind her corneas, readying her for a life of nocturnal hunting, of hiding from the sun.
“Who’s Linus?” Lace asked.
“Who knows? That’s been there for a while.”
“Oh. So what happens now?” she said. “I mean, Cal, did you bring me down here to … get rid of me or something?”
“Get rid—? Of course not!” I pulled the pills from my pocket. “Here, take two of these, right now.”
She shook out two and swallowed them, the pills catching for a moment in her dry throat. She coughed once, then said, “Is it really that dark down here? This isn’t some trick you’re pulling? I can really see in the dark?”
“Yeah, a normal person would be totally blind.”
“And I got this from your cat?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You know, Cal, it’s not like I had sex with your cat either.”
“But he sat on your chest while you slept and … exchanged breath with you, or something. Apparently that’s the way the old strain spreads, but nobody ever told me about it. Things are really screwed up right now at the Watch. In fact, things are about to go nuts in general.” I turned her to face me. “We’ll have to get out of the city. There’s going to be a lot of trouble as the infections set in.”
“Like you said when you first told me about the Watch? Everyone biting one another, a total zombie movie? So why not give everyone the pills?”
I chewed my lip. “Because they want the disease to spread, for some reason. But maybe they’ll eventually use the pills, and things will settle down, but until then…”
She looked at the bottle, squinting at its label. “And these really work?”
“You saw Sarah—she’s normal now. When I captured her, she was eating rats and hiding from the sun and living in Hoboken.”
“Oh, great, dude,” Lace said. “So that’s what I have to look forward to?”
“I hope not,” I said softly, reaching for her hand. She didn’t pull away. “Sarah didn’t have any pills at first. Maybe you’ll just go straight to the superpowers. I mean, you’ll be really strong and have great hearing, and a great sense of smell, too.”
“But Cal, what about the Garth Brooks thing?”
“Garth Brooks? Oh, the anathema.”
“It makes you start hating your old life, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “But Sarah’s over that too. She was even wearing an Elvis armband.”
“Elvis? What is it with your girlfriends?” Lace sighed. “But the anathema won’t happen to me?”
I paused, realizing I didn’t know anything for sure. None of my classes had covered the cat-borne strain or the ancient garlic-and-mandrake cure—it had all been kept secret
from me. I didn’t know what symptoms to look for, or how to adjust the dosage if Lace started to grow long black fingernails or fear her own reflection.
I cleared my throat. “Well, we’ll have to watch for symptoms. Is there anything in particular you really like? Potato salad?” I wracked my brain, realizing how little I knew about Lace. “Hip-hop? Heavy metal? Oh, yeah, the smell of bacon. Anything else I should worry about if you start despising it?”
She sighed. “I thought we covered this already.”
“What? Potato salad?”
“No, stupid.” And then she kissed me.
Her mouth was warm against mine, her heart still beating hard from our dash through the darkness, from the creepiness of the abandoned station, from the news that she would soon turn into a vampire. Or maybe just from kissing me—I could feel it pounding in her lips, full of blood. My own heartbeat seemed to rush into my head, strong enough to pulse red at the corners of my vision.
A predator’s kiss: endless, insistent, and my first in six long months.
When we finally parted, Lace whispered, “You feel like you’ve got a fever.”
Still dizzy, I smiled. “All the time. Supermetabolism.”
“And you’ve got supersmell too?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Dude.” She sniffed the air and frowned. “So what do I smell like?”
I inhaled softly, letting Lace’s scent claim me, the familiar jasmine of her shampoo somehow settling the chaos of the past twenty-four hours. We could kiss again, I realized, do anything we wanted. It was safe now, even with the parasite’s spores in my blood and saliva, because she was infected, just like me.
“Butterflies,” I said after a moment of thought.
“Butterflies?”
“Yeah. You use some kind of jasmine-scented shampoo, right? Smells like butterflies.”
“Wait a second. Butterflies have a smell? And it’s jasmine?”
My body was still humming from the kiss, my mind still reeling from all the revelations of the day, and there was something comforting about being asked a question I knew the answer to. I let the wonders of biology flow forth. “It’s the other way around. Flowers imitate insects—patterning their petals after wings, stealing their smells. Jasmine tricks butterflies into landing on it, so they carry pollen from one flower to another. That’s how jasmine flowers have sex with each other.”
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