“Esther let loose with another blast, but this time I was close enough to dodge under the jet-black beam of energy and press forward with a thrust. A knife whipped up out of nowhere and knocked my blade off target. She twisted the wand in her hand and shot another blast that caught me full in the chest. I went down like a sack of manure and curled up to maximize the coverage from my armor. My mom made this armor, and it can stand up to a lot.”
I shifted back and forth, unsettled that I hadn’t been there to help. “And it also put my sword into position to thrust up under her guard. But it was just a glancing blow. Another impact crushed my chest plate, introducing it to my ribs, and I felt something crack.
“And then I had the treat of a massive wave of pain before clocking out like a night-light.
“When I came to, my ribs felt like someone had stuck me in a giant-sized vise and gone to town for a while. I picked up my sword and got to my feet, keeping an eye out for Esther. I had no idea how long I’d been out. I kicked open the door to the dance studio and saw the aftereffects of a one-room tornado.
“Mangled chairs were scattered around the room, one embedded in the wall like a Salvador Dalí painting.
“Several prone figures dotted the floor, each with their own pool of blood. There were three people down—two women and a man, all in the jazz practice outfits.
“At the center of the room was Nate, hair waving around, energized by some kind of magic nimbus the same yellow-orange that lit up his eyes.”
Nate watched, leaning forward, arms closed in front of him. He looked interested, as if he hadn’t just lived the story. “When Nate spoke, the voice that came out wasn’t his. It was deeper, older. Crankier. It was the Gardener.
“ ‘Fat lot of good you ended up being, Nephilim,’ the Gardener said, putting down a teacup. ‘The witch is gone. I would not leave my agent without my watchful eye. Summon the others. The Greene woman is doubtless already on her way to another borough while she licks her wounds.’ ”
Carter opened up his hands. “And so, here we are.”
“You did well,” the Gardener said to Nate.
“Yeah, if you jumping into my body and using it like a diving suit to fight a shark is ‘doing well.’ Do you even know what it feels like when you do that?”
“I did what I had to in order to protect you, and the world. Your comfort is hardly a priority in those cases.”
Nate turned to Antoinette. “So is there a magical OSHA no one told me about? Maybe a magical lawyer who I can go to for a civil suit or a way out of this ass contract?”
The Gardener tutted. “The contract was written upon your heart and signed with the ink of your soul. It is binding in every possible way. I will not apologize. Instead, we should focus on the next step.”
“It’s my fault,” Carter said.
My head whipped to the side to stare at my roommate.
“I was distracted. I could have stopped her if I was ready.”
“Unlikely,” I said, realizing as I spoke that the Gardener was saying the exact same thing.
The Gardener coughed, then continued. “Your humility is admirable, but useless. Without room to evade workings, a martial assault will always lose out to a magical one. The disproportionate arms necessary to bring down a sorcerer of her caliber lies somewhere between a rocket launcher and a surface-to-surface missile, I’m afraid.”
“Do you have access to either of those?” I asked, trying to help.
“I could make some calls. But a magical response is by far the wiser choice,” the Gardener said.
I leaned forward. “But if you were not able to stop her, what are we expected to do?”
The Gardener did not bother turning to respond. “My powers are far more limited in the joining. A direct assault by coordinated forces could incapacitate her long enough for someone like the Nephilim here to finish her off. We merely need to create an encounter where we are the hunters, and she the hunted.”
I started to speak again, but the Gardener cut me off. He still focused on Nate, but also turned to look at Carter and Antoinette. By virtue of my peripheral position, I found myself easily excluded.
“Carter—given that you were the one most impacted by her magic, I’d like to make use of your armor in order to conduct an augury to find the Greene woman. Not only where she is, but where she will be, so that we can lay a proper trap.”
Antoinette made a T shape with her hands. “Time out. Can you tell us where we are first? We sure as hell aren’t still in the Theater District, and this place is kind of spooky with the one part Downton Abbey, one part Shadow Gallery.”
Again, Antoinette’s allusions went over my head.
“I took the liberty to bring you all to one of my safe houses. It is a pocket world tucked beside your world, a private extension of my garden. That is all you need to know for now,” the Gardener said. “Carter, the armor?” He held out an expectant hand.
Carter stood. “This won’t hurt the armor, right? My mom would kill me if I wrecked it.”
“Perhaps your mother should be more concerned that it saved your life and may yet save all of us. You mortals and your myopic, shortsighted priorities. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t throw down my plowshare and take up a sword during the Schism. But you have so much amazing potential when you’re not being idiots.”
“But, the armor?” Carter asked again.
“It will be fine,” the Gardener said, his voice curt. He snapped at Carter, “Now, boy.”
“Geez,” Carter said, removing the vambraces and greaves before he could pull off the main coat. He stripped down to the sleeveless shirt and linen pants, handing the coat over to the Gardener. Despite the being’s apparent fragility, he took the weight of the armor without flinching, then walked it over to a table.
The Gardener spoke to us without turning, already at work. “I will require concentration for this augury. You can find refreshments in the room beyond.” He gestured to a door opposite the entrance hall.
I restrained a smart remark as we made our way to a dining room. It held a fifteen-foot-long wooden table, set with fine china, several pots of tea and coffee, as well as finger foods of a number of kinds.
The Gardener may have been an imperious, arrogant ass, but he was, at the least, a hospitable one. The finger foods were quite delicious: empanadas, sandwiches, and a selection of fine cheeses to combine with equally fine crackers—the kind that seemed to only exist in concert with fine cheeses, like upscale hors d’oeuvres symbiotes.
“How long do you expect the augury to take?” I asked Nate.
He shrugged. “Hell if I know. I’m just assuming my whole schedule is wrecked until this all blows over. You might want to follow suit so you can get your calm on and stop twitching.”
Carter cut in, “Not sure that’s possible. Jake here twitches in his sleep.”
How helpful.
“That right?” Nate asked.
“It’s hardly relevant. And I will not apologize for being invested in stopping a woman who is a menace to the fabric of reality,” I said, my push for dignity likely underwhelmed by the miniature pickle I was gesturing with.
Antoinette rolled her eyes at the other two then grabbed my attention. “They’re teasing you because you’re an easy mark, Jake. We all know this is serious. But nobody can be on twenty-four/seven. This is a chance to relax for a while. We should all take it.”
“Speaking of which . . .” Carter held up a finely-carved glass decanter half-filled with sparkling amber liquid. He poured four short glasses and distributed them around the table.
Antoinette spun the glass, the light filtering through its facets to cast amber beams across the room. “So what do we toast?”
“Let’s start with ‘to not blowing up the world,’” Carter said.
“Yup. If the world ends before I get the chance to
win the Tony, I’m coming back from the apocalypse to kick each of your asses individually,” Nate said.
“To not blowing up the world,” Antoinette said.
I joined the chorus, and we clinked our glasses. The Greenes were well familiar with spirits of the liquid variety, so I downed my drink in a single go, savoring the smoky, peaty aroma that took up residence in my mouth and wafted up to my nose, seemingly all the way up into my skull.
Carter sputtered, losing part of his drink.
“You okay there, pretty boy?” Nate asked, a smile on his face.
“I’m fine,” Carter said, straightening himself and setting down the glass. “That’s good whiskey.”
“It’s brandy,” I said. “The color, taste profile—”
Antoinette cut me off. “You’re right. So when your boss figures this out,” she said to Nate, “we still have to take Esther out to finish this all so we can go back to our lives.” She turned to me. “Any suggestions?”
“In a straight fight, I am not a match for Esther.” I took several plates from the stack and started to pile them with food. Nate, Carter, and even Antoinette started looking more at the plates than at me.
Be patient, I thought. The crazy boy has a plan. “She is relentless, and more studied than I in accessing the Deeps. The best way to defeat her is by surrounding her and attacking with a variety of methods at once.”
I placed the brandy decanter in the center of a place mat then put my empty glass opposite it.
“First, I challenge her might against might, to draw her attention. I cannot win in a protracted conflict, but my strongest attacks can demand her attention.” I took a plate of vegetables and placed it on the far side of the decanter from my glass. “At that same moment, Antoinette should unleash Igbe or one of the other spirits to attack her. She may have bound spirits to defend her. In fact, we should expect it.”
Then I took a sandwich speared by a finely-carved wooden sword and slid its plate directly up to the decanter. “And while her spirits are distracted and her magical force arrayed against me, Carter will have the freedom to bring the fight to her.”
“That didn’t exactly work so well before,” Carter said, cracking his neck, revealing bruising across his collarbone.
“But that time you were alone, her attention free to turn the power of the Deeps on you directly.” I looked Carter directly in the eyes, did my best to convey sincerity and earnestness, to push past the antipathy between us to make myself perfectly clear. “I promise that I will not abate, will not yield. I cannot resist her for long, but if we work together, you will have the opening to strike.”
Carter leaned back, his lips pursed, arms crossed. Antoinette looked between us, sipping on brandy. Nate grabbed another sandwich and ate it in a single bite. And no one talked. Not for a long, timeless moment, each of us thinking, doubtless reflecting on how little I’d managed to assuage their anxiety about the coming fight.
INTERLUDE
Esther
Limping down the street, Esther kept her head down, avoiding eye contact as people passed by.
These sheep were all too easy to fool. They had less sense than chattel, who at least knew how to run from a predator. They were all caught up in webs of their own pitiful self-importance, ignorant of the coming storm that would wash the earth clean of their offal.
But among the sheep, there were wolves. Their teeth, in truth, could bring her low, especially wounded. Yes, another fight before she could heal would be unwise. Bullets were far harder to deflect than magic, required different stones, different incantations.
Esther kept her eyes open for wolves, always dressed in their blues, as if a cloak of authority could buoy them up like a ship on an ocean. But she was a Deep Thing, and ships were but flotsam and jetsam to be.
As she stepped over a loose grate, steel shuddered beneath her, accompanied by a waft of steam that rose up to warm her legs.
Esther noted the omen, the embrace from beneath, and slowed. She moved in her disguise, acting the part of a countrywoman visiting the city, here to see the big city while clutching to her morals. The layers hid all sorts of implements and supplies. She’d only been able to bring so much with her, so many things to do, so many Hearts to claim, blood to spill along the way.
But the depths of her disguise, the reality beneath the surface, that did not matter, as long as the city people told themselves a story, did not point her out for the hunter that she was.
An alley. Occupied, several figures standing around a garbage can fire, another buried in a mound of belongings. Too many. But she needed only one, no more than one. A single life’s blood would be a sufficient price. The Gatekeepers would take their tithe, but the Greene compacts would stand, centuries of bargains and interdependence. Even here, far from the family stronghold, the Gatekeepers would hear the call, would render service when paid. They were the Greenes’ channel to the gods, their power was her power.
A likely candidate bent around a corner. Sweat chilled as it rolled down her back, beneath layers and layers. The pain was taxing, distracted her from her purpose.
It would be gone soon enough.
Esther looked down the alley, saw it bend around a corner.
She circled the block, making sure that the dead end was just that.
Mother’s words played back in her mind.
“Esther, dear. When you go among them, the sheep, you must be always watchful. Their shepherds are few, and miss much, but when you take sacrifices, they will not be willing. So you must be careful, and you must not be spotted. Until the second circle is complete, at the least. By then, there will be no mistaking that the end is nigh.”
And then Mother had been consumed by rapturous joy, the exultation of the coming end.
There was no time to lollygag, to wait. The stars were waiting, the ley lines converging with the coming winter. It was coming, the proper time. And she had Hearts yet to collect.
Entering the alley, Esther drew stares from the huddled pair warming their hands, and another woman who ruffled through a cart, pulling out a perfectly-preserved diploma of some sort. She stared at it, lost in memory.
Esther turned the corner, and saw the dead end. Fitting. Perfect for her needs. It would take somewhat more power than necessary, but the nearby subway would give her a fine exit pathway, should the wolves catch her scent.
“Know your exits, dear,” Mother said. “Great-aunt Salome had learned that lesson the hard way when confronted by a trio of the Nephilim, back in Duluth, you know.”
Though if the lesson was fatal, was it properly learned? I bore the scars and marks of many lessons, bargains made, sacrifices bled out for the family.
First, be rid of the others. Esther turned to the pair at the can and pulled out two $20 bills. She kept her head down, face covered by the hood. She was as unmemorable as could be.
“These are yours, but you have to leave this alley, now,” she said.
Hands covered by threadbare mittens snatched the bills, and the two men disappeared, boots squelching on the wet concrete of the alley.
The figure in the mound was asleep, probably wouldn’t even wake up.
All it would take was a simple incantation. . . .
Esther spoke the words, the harsh beauty of Enochian, the First Tongue. They were but a whisper, but they dug into the earth as if they were a thunderclap.
Down she reached, beneath the pavement, beneath the subway lines, into the depths of the earth. With her mind, she felt a cool familiarity as she touched the Deeps, drank them in with her hands, drawing the power in like a lover.
She used her hands as paintbrushes, painting a net of silence and privacy over the edges of the alley, over the canopy of sky above, until she sealed off the alley, the sound netted in. Passersby would glaze right over the alley, their eyes seeing without seeing.
And wi
th that, Esther was ready to set to work.
“You got one of those for me?” the woman asked, her cart beside her. The diploma had vanished back into her countless bags. The woman was surprisingly young. Haggard, yes. But young. No more than three and twenty.
Even better. Younger blood had more promise, more potential.
“I’ve got something much better for you, my dear.” Esther smiled as brightly as she could, but still the woman shied away. Esther stepped forward and reached out to the young woman with an open hand.
“Give me your hand.”
The woman backed away, her eyes wide, scared. That hadn’t taken long. But no one would come to help her.
“This will be easier if you don’t resist.” Esther drew the family’s sacrificial knife, which caught the weak December sun, light glinting over the curves and forked points. “Though if you do, it’ll be more fun.”
The woman screamed, and the Greene followed. The woman returned to her cart and pushed, getting the wobbly thing moving.
Not so fast, little sheep.
Esther positioned herself between the cart and the one exit. The woman tried to go wide, brandishing a rusty knife, but Esther had learned knife play before her baby teeth began to fall out.
Grabbing the woman’s wrist, Esther pulled her past and slammed both of their bodies into the wall.
Esther pinned the woman against the concrete with a thrust of her own knife. The blade bit high, sliding gently between the woman’s ribs. Mustn’t damage the entrails; those would be needed for the divinations. One death would have to serve many purposes. “Use every part of the sacrifice,” Father had always said.
“No different from how you treat a cow, Esther. Each sacrifice is a gift, and we cannot be ungrateful, can we?”
No, we cannot. Esther thought.
There would be no waste, though it would take the rest of the day to be thorough. Part of the power taken would feed the net of privacy, but there would be plenty left over.
Savoring the privacy, Esther sang while she worked.
The woman sang too, in her own way. And it was beautiful.
Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods Page 9