Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Previous fatae survivors had mentioned that there had been women and teenagers, even the occasional child among the vigilantes. He was relieved to see that the group in front of him was almost entirely older males. It was sexist of him, and it probably didn’t matter when you had a metal weight coming down at you, but he fought easier against adult males, not women or children.

  And with that, he realized that his gun was already in his hand; and that he had come here, not to observe, but to spill blood.

  He had told Wren the truth: he had chosen his side. It didn’t matter if she wanted him there or not, not anymore.

  But he wasn’t going for the thugs. The Cosa was more than capable of handling those miserable excuses for DNA, and more, they deserved the chance to do a little payback.

  Sergei had his sights set on more rarified game.

  And he was due a little payback, as well.

  The thugs moved out, racing toward their targets, and Sergei stepped out of the shadows.

  “Duncan. A word with you, if I may?”

  The bridge was almost perfectly designed: two roadways on either side, one for inbound traffic and the other for cars heading into Brooklyn, with a walkway straight down the middle for pedestrian and cyclist traffic. Multiple concrete ramps led onto the walkways from the surrounding streets, and while traffic could become miserable at times, it never seemed to face the same sort of agony that was normal on the Jersey-bound side.

  The marchers funneled up the middle walkway, waving at the occasional car passing them on either side. Almost without exception, each driver honked and waved back.

  As they passed each light on the bridge, the current streaked up the wires, and snapped the light out with a glorious crack and waterfall of sparks, like miniature fireworks. Wren didn’t know if someone was doing that deliberately, or if it was just a side effect, but it was a nice touch either way.

  Then the chapel across and down the street sounded the hour: six gentle gongs in solemn procession, and the mood changed, just like that. Wren could feel it, a shiver than ran up her arms and down her back, under the skin, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the weather.

  The griffins spread their wings and rose into the sky, beaks snapping at the air, their heavy bodies more than a match for the wind, where their smaller cousins would get blown about. Clutched in their great claws were heavy iron bars: Franklin poles, the Cosa called them, after one of the founding fathers of the American Cosa. Lonejacks on the bridge sent current up into the air, touching and sparking off the bars as it was absorbed and redirected back down onto the ground in flashes of red neon, like some fantastic lightning strikes out of the clear dawn sky.

  That alone would get attention of anyone looking for current. It would also get the attention of everyone else who happened to be awake and looking up at that moment, but pity the poor soul who tried to capture the image with anything more advanced than a pencil and paper.

  Magic wasn’t meant to be captured. You just had to live in the moment.

  Wren tore her eyes away from the display long enough to look around her, more than a little worried. By now, someone should have sent out an alert. There should be—and there they were.

  Dozens of human figures appeared from doorways and alleys, swarming up the ramps on a direct intercept course with the lonejack “protesters.” Within seconds, the battle was joined. Baseball bats and protest signs snapped and cracked over heads. Someone who had failed basic science tried to use a metal staff against an enraged lonejack, and fell to the ground, shuddering and shimmering from the current that ran up the metal length and into his unprotected flesh.

  Idiot.

  Wren, invisible, slipped through the crowd, tripping and poking the Nulls as she could, but more set on her own personal mission: to find someone who looked to be directing the action, or somehow connected to a leader off-site. Unseen, she would not be attacked, and so long as nobody accidentally swung at or stepped on her, she was in no danger, even in the thick of things.

  She had told Sergei once that she could paint herself blue and waltz through Grand Central Station at rush hour, and not be noticed. She hadn’t been exaggerating. Much.

  The problem was, she couldn’t do much of anything else, while waltzing. So every time someone did hit her, or step on her, she had to just swear and deal with it.

  Frustrated, Wren reached the center span of the bridge a bit ahead of the battle, and looked back.

  At some point, while she was sidestepping a swinging sign, the fatae had joined the fracas, giving the Nulls their preferred target. Occasionally a fatae would swing at the wrong sort of human—the Quad had ordered all lonejacks to wear a strip of dark red fabric on their shirts, to identify themselves just in case, but it looked like most of them had either forgotten or ignored the order entirely.

  It was, she had to admit, an impressive sight even seen with Null eyes. Over the hundreds of milling bodies, four griffins still circled and wheeled, occasionally swooping to harry someone, or divert an assault. Smaller figures swooped lower, pulling hair and screaming insults and…

  Wren almost laughed in the middle of it all, as she saw a slender, snakelike flying form very clearly take a shit on someone’s head.

  Occasionally, a body would be thrown over the side of the bridge. The crew assigned to under-bridge detail had strict instructions not to let any of their own people actually hit ground. They had been given no such instructions about Nulls. Wren just hoped they were able to identify them quickly—or err on the side of caution, rather than letting everyone hit the pavement.

  Farther out behind her, the nausunni had marshaled the water fatae. Anyone who tried to come in or escape by the water would meet significant—and deadly—resistance there. Comforted by that thought, Wren didn’t bother to guard her own back, but kept scanning the crowd in front of her.

  A loup-garoux ran on four legs through the crowd, biting the ankles of anyone who—as far as Wren could tell from the yelps—looked tasty. The beast came panting up to her, working on scent, not sight, and she kicked it away without hesitation, not waiting to see if it considered her friend or foe. It could stand on its hind legs like the rest of them, and look you in the face when it bit, not nip at your damn legs.

  Okay, maybe she was a little shaky still over the hellhound thing. She had cause, damn it.

  Shaking her head, she went back to observing the fight. Around and through the combatants, current raged. To Talented eyes, the air was aflame with an orgy of crackling neon. But even the most hopeless Null would be able to see the current that was running up through the wires and metal rigging of the bridge itself, like some kind of postmodernistic Saint Elmo’s fire, blue flame sparked with gold and silver running through every metal-touched element of the bridge, crackling and hissing with a corona that made religious folk cross themselves and pray for salvation.

  Ohm’s law, to the science geeks. Current lash-back, to lonejacks.

  But in all that, she saw nothing that looked like a point of leadership. In fact, she saw nothing that looked like leadership at all, just a confused mass of swinging arms, kicking legs, and the occasional swipe of a sign or bat.

  She grabbed a thread of current and sent it winging up into the air, searching for the psychic flavor she had imprinted on it earlier that morning, when they were getting their marching orders. The thread found the source of that flavor, and created a connection between them, like a semisecure landline.

  We’ve been played, she told it. There’s not a single person out here who has a clue about anything other than kill the monsters and their turncoat human allies.

  You’re certain?

  Absolute. Whoever’s pulling the strings, they didn’t come out to play.

  We’re going to have to up the stakes, the Quad-mind said grimly, then broke off contact.

  “Up them how?” Wren asked the empty air, then used some of Sergei’s better Russian swearwords as she saw what was coming toward the bridge on the Manhattan s
ide.

  “Please God, don’t nobody swing at a cop….”

  “This is the New York Po—” The loudspeaker squawked and then died as current hit it. The truck rolling into the fray came to a stop at the start of the bridge, unable to move forward as the fight continued to rage. There had been a lot of frustration building over the past year, and the mere appearance of a dozen cops in riot gear wasn’t going to slow that down.

  Tear gas, though, did the trick. Within minutes, cops in gas masks had a dozen or more of the human population facedown on the pavement, most of them handcuffed to the railings. The smaller fatae slipped away, the cops either not noticing them or choosing—for whatever reason—to let them go.

  Some of the force probably still remembered working with a partner who seemed more than a little…off, or unusual. The rest just didn’t want to deal with the hassle of trying to book an illegal immigrant, no matter where they might have emigrated from. And at least one cop, when brought up face-to-face with a tall figure with a six-point rack of antlers growing from its head, made a shallow bow and then went on with his job.

  Trusting her no-see-me, Wren slipped closer, then was driven back by the remaining fumes. Without a gas mask, going any closer in would end up with her flat on the ground, as well, and still invisible.

  This was not how it was supposed to go, she thought grimly. Damn it, what are you guys planning? She had to believe that they still had a plan, that their “higher stakes” hadn’t involved the pulling up of, and buggering out.

  Valere!

  A cry for help, a warning, a hard slap between the shoulder blades; the ping was all that and a visual of a spear incoming, crackling with current-fire.

  “What the he—”

  The heavy thwap-sound of wings was the only warning she got before a great heavy shadow fell over her, and a griffin grabbed her, none too gently, in its talons. They were up off the bridge before Wren had the chance to draw breath. By the time she’d recovered from that shock, and could breathe again, the griffin swooped down in a dizzying dive, and dropped her. The landing, palms and knees on hard pavement, knocked the next breath out of her lungs, and she collapsed as though someone had landed a kidney-punch.

  The blow of current did hit her in the kidneys, and sent her sprawling facedown onto the pavement. She rolled more from instinct than thought, her body moving when she would have sworn it couldn’t.

  “Wren, get up!” A voice—Rick’s voice, urgent.

  She got up, moving low and back on her heels, pivoting and scanning for the threat.

  She hadn’t faced off against another Talent since…since Max almost killed her, when she tried to prod the old wizzart into helping her. Not like this, not in a pure contest of current.

  She pulled double handfuls of current up and formed a shield with it; trying to buy herself time to figure out what the hell that damned griffin had dropped her into the middle of.

  The bridge loomed to their right, the possible escape of sidewalks and buildings blocked by a tall metal fence. She could maybe make it over, maybe not. Escape wasn’t the point.

  “You okay?” Rick asked.

  “Stupid question,” she said, feeling him take her back. They were surrounded by half a dozen…kids, was all Wren could think, although some of them probably weren’t much younger than she was. Behind her, the biker-Talent’s bulk wasn’t as comforting as it should have been; the blood splattering on the ground wasn’t hers, and it didn’t seem to belong to their attackers.

  “What the hell…” Keep moving, Valere, keep moving…

  “I think we’ve found the ones who killed that angel.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  They were under the bridge now, the pale red brick arching overhead, turning every sound into an echo. The ground underneath was bare; it was a gift, that no snow had been plowed into the alcove, or worse, allowed to melt and freeze into ice.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Wren saw a figure move; part of her brain recognized it as Michaela even as a blast of current took the woman square in the chest, and she went down. The gypsy representative rolled onto her side, and didn’t move again.

  “Don’t look,” she said quickly, even as Rick started to react. “Don’t look, don’t think. Right now, it’s just us here, us against them, and worrying about anyone else is going to get you—and me—killed. Do you have any defensive training at all?”

  His snort was better than she’d expected. “Good. You do your bit, I’ll do mine.”

  She could have disappeared. But that would have meant leaving him the only available target. Escape isn’t the point.

  Oh the bloody hell it’s not!

  He lunged away from her side, his arm and leg sweeping out in a move she vaguely recognized as some kind of kung fu judo-thing. It didn’t take his opponent down, but it moved him past them, forcing three of the five to turn and deal with him, while the sixth was kneeling over Michaela, preparing to…

  A shock ran through Wren’s system, and she felt her gorge rise. Oh Christ be merciful. The boy was sucking her core.

  It was anathema, like eating human flesh—worse than eating human flesh. Like consuming a person’s soul, raping the essence of what they were, taking their power and their sense of self away, and feeding it into his own core…

  Anathema not only for the harm it did to the victim, but for what it did to the taker, as well. Current was touched by the signature of the user; the longer the current was in contact, the stronger the signature. The core, the storage of all the power a Talent kept within herself constantly? It had a signature like John Hancock’s. Taking that inside you, you ran the risk of losing your own self, if the person you ate was stronger.

  Even as the shock was traveling through Wren’s system, she was peeling off a strip of her shield and fashioning it into a weapon. The two remaining…whatever-they-weres, she couldn’t call them Talent, not after what she’d seen them doing—moved toward her, and she shuddered at the expressions on their faces; blank, not angry or aggressive or happy or mad…not even hungry. Not even alive.

  Stoking up the bright neon hum of her core, Wren dived into the solid mass of current, let herself be swallowed up in it, and came out the other side.

  “Back off, bitches,” she said to the nearest opponent, and slammed the woman with everything she had.

  It wasn’t enough.

  “Sergei Didier.”

  Sergei had only met Duncan a handful of times, but he had heard about him from his very first day within the Silence. Duncan was the head of R & D, the memory and money of the Silence. He was fast, smart, ruthless, and above all loyal: rumor said that he was the handpicked successor of the original founders, the man chosen to hold the organization together on the daily level, while the top levels went about looking after longer-term goals.

  Somewhere along the line, Duncan became the source of inspiration—and awe. He ran his department with a gloved hand that nonetheless could feel the pulse of every creature held inside it, from the newest, rawest recruit all the way up to the top floors where Andre worked.

  Nobody feared him, exactly. But everyone was wary of him. And nobody crossed him.

  Sergei had recognized KimAnn for what she was, because he had seen it in its final stages, in Duncan.

  “You’re far from your master, Poul,” Sergei said to Duncan’s companion.

  Poul Jorgenmunder had the same training Sergei’d had; he didn’t let the comment do more than roll off his back.

  “Ah. I see.” And Sergei did. Andre had been stripped of his right-hand man, at a time when he was trying to rally his team against the forces working against him. Forces, clearly, that Duncan led. Sergei wondered if the old man knew. And if he knew how futile his struggles would—inevitably—be.

  When Sergei had still been with the Silence, Duncan had been a power to reckon with. A decade later, he had clearly gained even more control over the organization.

  Sergei risked a glance down the street; the br
idge was engulfed in what looked like fireworks. Current, he knew, and knew as well that there would be more than his purely human eyes could see. Sirens flashed and wailed in the morning light, and he had to look away, not be distracted.

  “You’ve set all this in motion. Why?”

  Duncan simply stood there, coolly watching him, but Poul was more than willing to respond. “You said it yourself.” He recited, clearly quoting: “‘Strange beasts, a variety of species. Considered an underclass of the Cosa, the Council does not deal with them, and most of the lonejacks interact only sparsely.’”

  Sergei’s own words; taken from one of his very first reports after meeting the fatae, years before.

  “You memorized my earlier works. How touching.”

  Poul’s expression tightened, and he would have moved forward toward Sergei if Duncan hadn’t stopped him with a simple hand gesture.

  Heel, dog, Sergei thought.

  The car door opened. Sergei braced himself, but didn’t look. The taptaptap of expensive shoes on the pavement came to him, and even before the third man came into his line of sight, Sergei knew who it was.

  “Andre. So much for your attempts to help.” He didn’t even try to hide the bitterness in his voice: he had known that his former boss would try to use them, had accepted that. He hadn’t thought the old bastard would lie to him. But then, why was he surprised? Nobody trusted anyone, it seemed. And with good reason.

  Andre met his gaze squarely. “I agreed that we needed to discover who was behind all of this. Now I know.”