“That you, Riordan?” said the male voice.
“It’s me, Adler,” said Riordan. “Let me in. We’ve got serious problems.”
The door clicked, and it swung open to reveal a man in his late thirties, trim and fit. He wore black dress shoes, black trousers, and a black sweater over a buttoned-down white shirt. His face was bony, his dark hair receding and close-cropped.
“Riordan,” said Adler. His eyes flicked over Russell and me. “You’ve got guests.” His gaze settled on me. “That’s her, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Riordan. “We need a phone right now. I’ll explain later.”
Adler jerked his head. “This way.”
We walked down a short entry hall and into a living room. It was a big room, with a pair of glass doors opening onto a balcony that had a good view of both Central Park and the street below. The furnishings were utilitarian – folding chairs and tables, one of which had a lot of computer equipment. Stacks of transparent plastic storage totes rested against the wall, and they held clothes and ammunition and medical supplies. A lot of ammunition and medical supplies, come to think of it. Just how often did the Shadow Hunters get into fights in New York?
A dark-skinned woman stood in the center of the living room, scowling at a TV mounted on the wall. She was tall, well over six feet, and was wearing cargo pants and a black tank top. The tank top showed arms that looked as if she could bench press me and break me in half without much effort. The TV was showing a live news report about the Royal Progress, and the woman was scowling at it.
She looked at me, and her scowl intensified.
Then she saw Riordan and smiled.
“Boss,” she said. Her voice was rich with an English accent. “Looks like you got in and out alive.”
“So far, Nora,” said Riordan. Adler stopped near the wall, looking like a soldier waiting for orders. “But that’s about to change.”
“Hi, Nora,” said Russell. I blinked in surprise, and then I remembered that they had met during the Archon attack on Milwaukee.
“Hey, Russell,” said Nora, and looked at me. “Looks like you found the tigress, boss. She wasn’t actually a Rebel?”
“No,” I said, walking into the room. “Look, we need a cell phone right now, and...”
“Sure,” said Nora, picking up a cell phone from the table. “I just have to do one thing first.”
“Right,” I said, taking the cell phone. “We…”
Nora slapped me.
And she hit me hard, too. Not as hard as she could have. I mean, if she had punched me, she would have broken my jaw and knocked me to the floor, and she wouldn’t even need to use her Shadowmorph to do it. As it was, it still spun me around, and the only reason I didn’t fall over was that I hit the wall next to the TV.
“Nora!” snapped Riordan, his voice cracking like a whip as his hand closed around her wrist.
“Ow,” I said.
“I was there when you called Riordan,” said Nora. Her voice was calm, but her eyes flashed like knives. “I heard the things you said to him. You had no right to throw those things in his face, no right at all. I’ve known him a lot longer than you, little girl, and he can do a lot better than you, and you didn’t deserve to have him come after you.”
“That is enough, Nora,” said Riordan.
“It’s fine.” I rubbed my aching jaw and looked at Nora. “As it happens, I agree with you.” She blinked in surprise. “If you’re done, I would like to make a phone call before the city gets nuked.”
“Nuked?” said Adler.
“Nuked?” said Nora, her dark eyes going wide.
I ignored them and the pain in my jaw (God, that woman could hit hard) and I started punching Arvalaeon’s number into the phone.
“Long story short,” said Riordan, “the leader of the Rebels dug up a nuke the High Queen missed, and he’s planning to detonate it underneath the Skythrone sometime today.”
“A nuke?” said Adler. “Jesus Christ.”
“A nuke,” said Riordan. “And the Rebels and the Archons are launching a major attack on New York to distract the High Queen. They’re going to attack any minute, and the frost giants and dwarves are coming to fight them.”
I lifted the phone to my ear.
“Jesus,” said Nora.
The phone buzzed.
“Line out of service,” said an electronic voice.
“Goddamn it,” I said, glaring at Nora. “Did you give me an out-of-service phone?”
“No, the phone’s working,” said Nora. “The cell phone network’s overloaded. All the tourists in the city. Half the calls I’ve been making all week have been dropping.”
I cursed again and hit the redial button.
This time the phone rang twice, and then I got a busy signal.
“Goddamn it!” I said in frustration.
“Who are you trying to call?” said Nora.
“Lord Arvalaeon,” I said, and both Nora and Adler looked surprised. “He owes me.”
“We might have to contact Homeland Security,” said Adler. “Homeland Security calls get priority in the cell phone network and shouldn’t drop.”
“We don’t have time,” I said. “If we tell Homeland Security that the Rebels are trying to sneak a nuke into the city, they’ll investigate, but it will take hours for us to talk to anyone with actual authority.”
“I think we had better just go to Times Square,” said Riordan. He looked at Nora. “The Skythrone is there?”
“Yeah, boss,” said Nora. “It’s hovering right over Times Square, about three-quarters of a mile straight up. The High Queen is greeting various nobles and politicians in Times Square for the next few hours.” She gestured at the TV. “You can watch the live stream here.”
I hit the redial button on the phone again, and once more I got the out-of-service message.
“Damn it,” I said. “I think you’re right. Let’s get moving. God knows how we’re going to get through all the crowds and Homeland Security roadblocks.” I rubbed my aching jaw. “Though once the attack begins, it’s going to be all chaos anyway. We can probably get to Times Square then.”
“And do what, exactly?” said Nora.
“Find Nicholas Connor, kick his ass, and destroy his bomb,” I said. “We…”
The phone chimed in my hand, and then the OUT OF SERVICE message appeared on the screen.
At the exact same time, the picture on the TV dissolved into static.
“What the hell?” I said.
Adler drew out his own phone. “No signal.”
Nora frowned, walked to the table with the computer equipment, and scowled. “The cell phone network is down. And so is the Internet.”
“Jammed,” I said. “It’s being jammed. The attack’s going to begin any second. We’ve got to go…”
I started to turn towards the door, and then things went to hell.
I felt a surge of magical power, and the door blew off the hinges and slammed into the wall. The others whirled, reaching for weapons, and two Elves stormed into the apartment. Both wore the black uniforms of Knights of the Inquisition, and both had handguns in their right hands. Lighting globes snarled and danced over their left hands.
“Hands in the air!” roared the first Inquisitor. “Hands in the air right now!”
I put my hands into the air, and the others followed suit.
“Identify yourselves,” ordered the Inquisitor. He had the harsh, alien features of the Elves, with cold eyes the color of amethyst.
“This is a safe house of the Family of Shadow Hunters,” said Riordan, calm as glass. “We need to speak with…”
“What this is,” said the Inquisitor, “is a Rebel cell.” He scowled at us. “We detected a rift way six city blocks from here. Homeland Security received multiple reports of gunmen on the street. And there is a locus of magical force,” his eyes shifted to me, “in your pocket.”
Guess he sensed the sjolmark.
“Yeah,” I said. “Plea
se listen to me. There’s about to be a massive Rebel attack on the city. You need…”
“You will remove all your weapons and come with us,” said the Inquisitor. “Should you fail to comply with our orders, we will employ lethal force. Now remove all your weapons. We will not ask again.”
I wanted to scream in frustration. Any minute Nicholas would drive through Manhattan with a nuclear bomb. Everyone, including the two idiot Inquisitors standing in front of us, was going to die. And they were going to arrest us and question us, and by the time we convinced them of the truth, New York would be ashes, followed shortly by the rest of human civilization.
“All right,” said Riordan, “but…”
Then things got worse.
The building shook, the floor vibrating, some dust falling from the ceiling, and a roar boomed out, so loud that the balcony doors shuddered and one of them cracked. All of us, humans and Elves, looked towards the doors in surprise.
A fireball bloomed in Central Park, and several of the trees had caught fire.
I heard the explosion echoing…no, that wasn’t it. There were other explosions throughout Manhattan, and I saw another flare of fire on the other side of the park.
“What the hell?” said one of the Inquisitors in the Elven tongue.
The second Inquisitor produced an aetherometer and glanced at its spinning dials. “Multiple rift ways are opening throughout the city.”
The attack had begun.
And we were out of time. We had to move now.
I summoned magical power and cast the Cloak spell. As soon as I vanished from sight, I stepped to the side, squeezed past the Inquisitors, and got behind them.
“What the hell?” said the first Inquisitor again, looking back at the living room. “Weren’t there five of them?”
I dropped my Cloak and cast a second spell. It was a telekinetic shove, and it caught the Inquisitor on the left. It drove him forward, and his head bounced off the drywall with a hideous crack. The Inquisitor on the right started to turn, but I jumped forward, casting another spell as I did.
My hand came up and seized the right side of his face, and I finished the mindtouch spell.
The Inquisitor’s eyes bulged as I established the mental link, and then he started screaming incoherently as I poured some of my less pleasant memories into his skull. I had gotten good at this, and I knew what would happen. The Elf’s mind was old and strong, but so was mine, and I had endured a lot of pain. The Inquisitor’s mind would basically shut down and reboot to protect itself from the horror of the memories, and he would wake up in a half-hour with a splitting headache and no memory of the last few hours.
The Knight of the Inquisition dropped like a stone, and I jumped past him as the second Inquisitor shoved away from the wall. He started to cast a spell, but he was woozy because I had bounced his head off the drywall. I hit him with another telekinetic shove, and I stepped up and worked the mindtouch spell again.
The Inquisitor let out a scream as I flooded his mind with memories of torment, and he dropped like a rock.
I let out a long breath and looked through the ruined door into the hallway, but the Inquisitors hadn’t brought any backup.
Another explosion rang out, the balcony door rattling again.
“Okay,” I said, looking back at the others. “We need to move. We…”
They were staring at me in astonishment. Even Riordan and Russell. Adler’s jaw was hanging open. Nora looked like she was seriously reconsidering the wisdom of having slapped me.
“What?” I said.
“Tigress,” said Nora, her voice careful. “Those were Knights of the Inquisition.”
“Yeah, they were,” I said. “Glad you noticed.”
“They were Knights of the Inquisition,” said Nora, “and you went through them like a knife.”
I opened my mouth to snap at her, closed it, and a sense of unreality went through me.
They were Inquisitors, and I had just beaten them.
It hadn’t even been all that hard. I had spent my entire life in terror of the Inquisition, constantly looking over my shoulder, living in fear of the moment I screwed up on one of Morvilind’s jobs and the Inquisitors took me.
And now I had taken down two of them in about fifteen seconds.
“Yeah,” I said. “Guess I did.”
“How…did you do that?” said Nora.
I grinned my rictus of a grin at her.
“You really want to know?” I said. “I died, Nora. I died again and again. I died and went to hell. But it didn’t break me. It made me stronger. And now we’re going to go stop the Rebels and save the world.”
Nora snorted. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Good speech,” said Russell.
“Thanks,” I said. “Let’s move.”
Chapter 8: Rebel Fist
At my suggestion, we dumped the two Inquisitors in the lobby. Riordan carried one, and Nora and Adler carried the second between them. (If you ever need people to move bodies in a hurry, Shadow Hunters are the people to do it.) When the Inquisitors woke up, they would have no memory of our little altercation in the Shadow Hunters’ safe house.
And when they did wake up, they would have much bigger problems for two reasons.
Assuming we had not all perished in nuclear fire.
First, as we left the Inquisitors in the lobby, we heard the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The Cruciform Eye could open many gates at once, and knowing Nicholas, he would send small raiding parties, open new gates in different locations in the city, and send in another wave of raiders. The goal would be to cause as much chaos and confusion as possible, and when those Inquisitors woke up, they would have a thousand more urgent things to do.
Second, we sort of stole their vehicles.
I did not know this, but it turns out that the Inquisition has access to really excellent motorcycles.
They had left their two vehicles parked in the streets with lights flashing. The first was a black Royal Motors SUV, and it was a high-end model. It even had seat warmers, which was unnecessary in July in New York. The large collection of weaponry and ammunition in the cargo area was more useful.
The second vehicle was a motorcycle.
A beautiful motorcycle.
Specifically, it was a sleek black Royal Motors NX-100 sportsbike. I had a Royal Motors NX-9 sportsbike, and I loved that thing. It was a great bike. But the NX-100 was an amazing motorcycle, absolutely top of the line in performance, handling, acceleration, and speed.
“Yeah,” I said. “You guys take the SUV. I’ll take the bike.”
“You remember how to handle one of those things?” said Riordan. He looked at the others. “Nora, you drive. Adler, Russell, and I will provide fire support.”
“Right, boss,” said Nora, and she headed for the SUV.
Despite the urgency of the battle, I grinned at Riordan and threw a leg over the bike. I have to admit I did that with a bit more stretching than necessary since Riordan was watching me.
“It’s been a hundred and sixty years,” I said, sliding the Inquisitor’s key into the ignition, “but a girl never forgets how to ride a bike.” I turned the key, started the engine, and revved it. The motorcycle made a satisfying sound.
“Guess so,” said Riordan. “Russell!” He looked at the SUV. “Any luck with the communications equipment?”
“Nope,” called Russell from inside the SUV. “Even the short-range radios get nothing but static.”
“The Rebel jamming is blocking anything that uses a radio signal,” said Adler. “I couldn’t even pair an earpiece with my phone.”
“All right,” said Riordan, looking back at me. “We’ll have to communicate through hand signals.”
“Yeah,” I said as another fireball bloomed on the other side of the park. “But we don’t have much of a plan.”
“We just need to get to Times Square without the Inquisition or Homeland Security stopping us,” sai
d Riordan.
“Shouldn’t be hard,” I said. “They’re going to be busy.” I let out a ragged breath. “Let’s do it.”
I started to turn to the motorcycle’s handlebars, but Riordan grabbed my hand.
I looked at him, my heart skipping a beat.
“Be careful,” he said.
“Oh, I’m always careful,” I said. “You, too.”
He nodded and jogged back to the SUV.
I revved the bike’s engine once more, gripped the handlebars, got my shoes settled in the footrests, and I accelerated south down 5th Avenue, apartment and condo buildings rising on my left, Central Park on my right. The motorcycle shot forward with the smooth grace of a cheetah running down prey. God, but that was an excellent bike! Nora punched the gas on the SUV, and the black vehicle shot after me, lights flashing. Between the lights on my bike and those on the SUV, we ought to be able to run red lights and force traffic out of our way.
But that wasn’t a problem.
For one thing, Manhattan had been locked down to anything but government vehicles, taxis, and mass transit for the High Queen’s visit, so there wasn’t any traffic to avoid.
Second, the city was already in chaos.
Gunfire and explosions echoed over Central Park, and I saw people fleeing along the sidewalk in all directions. A flight of a half-dozen helicopters painted the blue of Homeland Security shot overhead, flying so low that I heard the throb of their rotors over the roar of my bike’s engine. After a half-mile or so, I heard the wail of raid sirens in the distance. Major cities had these sirens to alert the inhabitants of Archon attack, and someone had finally gotten around to sounding them. Just as well – the more people who got off the streets, the more people who would survive.
Not that a closed door would do anything against a nuclear blast.
We made good time because of the lack of traffic, and I managed to get the bike up to fifty miles an hour, probably the first time anyone has ever gone that fast on a Manhattan surface street during the day. Nora kept the SUV close behind me, the lights flashing. We passed 106th Street and then shot through the 97th Street intersection just in time to avoid a line of Homeland Security SUVs roaring past, no doubt rushing to respond to the attack. They didn’t slow down at all to look at us.
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