Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods

by Michael R. Underwood

  Leaning against the wall, I checked to make sure we were all still there. I’d blocked out the other civilians, who were huddled at the end of the hall. Why hadn’t they gone?

  “We were too late,” I said. “She’s here.”

  “No kidding,” Antoinette said, stepping out of the hall. Behind her were three children, all perhaps five, two Hispanic and one Asian. They were frozen with fear. The Hispanic boy’s trousers were wet, and after seeing the stain, I smelled urine.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said to the boys. I was far from sure that was true, but it was the thing to say, the humane thing to say.

  “Let’s go find your parents,” Antoinette said. “Jake, you want to come with me?”

  I joined her, and Dorothea and Carter followed us.

  “You think that thing was Sister Dearest’s fault?” Carter asked.

  “Hope so. Thought I’d cleared those things out this summer. This f—” Dorothea caught herself. “This city. Sometimes I don’t know if it can ever be safe.” She cracked her neck, kneading at it with one hand. She looked older in that moment, like a ship in a low tide, exposing the wear on the hull.

  We left the elevators and wound through the halls. Two turns later, we found more blood.

  Smears on the walls. A still body on the floor. And boot prints in the blood that continued on down the hall.

  The Hispanic boy started screaming.

  I took two more steps toward the blood, looked at the boots. The print left in the pool looked too much like Esther’s to do anything but set my heart to a constant vibration.

  “This is bad,” I said.

  “Fuck,” Dorothea said, forgetting the children. Their worries had eclipsed bad language. “Jake, you, me, and Carter go after her, now. Toni, get the kids to 7G. Ask for Caroline.”

  Antoinette nodded, turning the children around. “Let’s go this way, okay? It’ll be safe this way.”

  We took off down the hall, Carter in the lead, his long strides eating up yards at a time. I hustled to follow, and Dorothea, despite being the shortest by six inches, kept pace seemingly without effort. The woman was a bundle of mysteries as diverse as the city.

  The bloody footprint grew fainter as we wound through the halls, but it led us far enough to take the stairs. Which was exactly far enough to be tremendously unuseful.

  “How many floors does this building have?” I asked.

  “Twenty,” Dorothea said.

  “Great. Just great,” Carter said.

  I grimaced. “Sadly, we should be able to hear screaming when we reach the right floor.”

  “Kid’s right. Let’s get moving,” Dorothea said, lumbering up the stairs.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  As we huffed up past the fourth floor, Carter asked, “So, what did you do before you were a Knight?”

  Dorothea spoke through steady, slow breaths. “I was a beat cop. My screwup brother, Ronald, bless his heart, got himself into trouble, ended up on the street. I’d visit him week after week, tried to get him to move in with me in my place in Brooklyn. But he had to do everything on his own. Went off his meds on his own. Got himself addicted on his own. Got himself killed on his own.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. My long legs made the scaling easier than for some, but it was more concentrated activity than I was used to, layered on top of the strain of magic use.

  “Thank you. I couldn’t help him, but by the time he passed, I’d come to know the community around him, the other folks carving out lives, lost between the cracks. And then Ji-hun, one of the Broadway Knights, offered me a chance to make a difference, try to help other people the way I couldn’t help Ronald. So here I am,” Dorothea said, waving at the stairwell as we reached the sixth floor. “That satisfy your curiosity?”

  Carter nodded. “Sorry for your loss.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Let’s see if we can keep a few families from getting as screwed up as mine, shall we?”

  We got to the seventh floor before we heard the screaming coming from above. Piling out onto the ninth floor, we saw more streaks of blood, burned, sulfurous marks from the passing of another wraith. And more bodies.

  Esther had abandoned all pretense of stealth, which meant that the police would be arriving soon. Though I did not like their odds against wraiths and whatever else Esther might have up her hand-stitched sleeves.

  Thinking over the incredible amount of power she’d thrown around in the last days, I wondered how long she’d been preparing, how many favors the family had called in, sacrifices made.

  But if she was telling the truth about waking the unborn, there was no reason to hold anything back.

  The voices led us to the eighth floor. Carter took the lead, advancing sword-first. If Esther had given up on stealth, so too could we. I merely hoped that any residents who were armed wouldn’t lash out at us and ask questions later on.

  I at least did not appear armed, though I had one hand on the dagger I’d taken from Antoinette’s store, in the pocket of my coat. With the gems depleted, I would need to draw blood for more workings.

  We cleared the first hall, following the sound of screaming. On this floor, the paint on the walls was more cracked, the floor dirty, speckled with trash and slush. We turned the corner, and clarity combined with fear, scrambling over each other to be processed first.

  A half-dozen entropy spirits were attacking the residents and walls of the floor. They had the shapes of cockroaches, pigeons, rats, and other vague forms that I couldn’t pin down.

  In cities, especially in older buildings, the forces of entropy were sufficient, the decay long-running enough, to generate their own spiritual signature. This building was old enough, and poorly kept enough, that now the building itself was being turned against the inhabitants. But this was another distraction.

  Dorothea grumbled. “And here we are without the Laroux.”

  Carter stepped forward. “You want me to swat these things?”

  “Let me handle the spirits,” I said. It came out more confident than I’d imagined, and perhaps more confidently than was justified, considering that I was fast approaching the limit of my stamina, especially if I wanted to have any reserves to face my sister.

  So instead of drawing blood, I spoke to the spirits directly.

  I remembered the voice my father used when speaking with spirits, reaching to the bottom of my register, and granting each word my full weight.

  “I am a scion of the Greene. Leave this place, or be destroyed.”

  Half of the spirits paused, turning to face me. The other half continued clawing and pecking at a Hispanic family. The father swung a baseball bat at the spirits, but the creatures were canny enough to dodge and strike around his unpracticed swings.

  “Be gone!” I said, waving one arm as imperiously as I could manage. Father had always made it seem so powerful. I felt like a boy playing dress-up.

  The mass of spirits was seemingly not impressed. They coalesced and continued to attack the residents. Seeing my failure, Carter charged. He bat and swatted at the spirits with his sword, which was rather like trying to clean up a dusty room with an umbrella. But it kept them from attacking. Dorothea closed and fired at the floor. I recalled the label “street sweeper,” which I’d seen assigned to shotguns at some point in the past.

  But watching would not help these people. I took the job that Antoinette had done downstairs. I ran into the engagement, then slid past, squeaking along the wall behind Dorothea.

  On the other side, I waved to the people. “Run! This way!” I said, picking the right-hand pathway arbitrarily.

  The screaming cluster followed me down a hall with doorways on both sides, until I saw a door open, its owner peeking out at the commotion.

  “Quick! Shelter these people!” I shouted more than asked, stopping at the door. The youn
g man was wearing silk nightclothes, his eyes as wide as golf balls.

  He cocked his head at me, then looked to the people. A conveniently-timed inhuman scream echoed down the hall, and the man opened his door wider, letting the people in.

  “We’ll tell everyone when it’s safe to come out. Be careful,” I said, then turned and started running back to the central hall.

  Carter and Dorothea had cleared out the spirits. The room was left a mess, the spirits’ corpses having become refuse and decay around the room, but it was safe enough.

  “What next?” I asked. Dorothea reloaded her shotgun, while Carter wiped the ectoplasm from his blade.

  “Keep going up, I bet,” Dorothea said. “If I were her, I’d leave a decoy a few floors below where she was actually going.”

  I nodded. That’s what I would do, as well. “Once more to the stairs?”

  And so we went. Four flights later, I was sweating, and Dorothea was breathing hard. A flight after that, we heard another set of screams layered over chaotic thumping.

  Carter dashed up the last flight of stairs, taking them two at a time. I followed as best I could, breathing heavy. I reached the landing as Carter kicked open the door, revealing a pair of wraiths tearing at a wide Asian man with a beard, who stood between the creatures and two toddlers, holding a spatula in his hands as a meager weapon.

  My roommate leapt into the fray, cutting high at the creatures’ darkly infantile faces. The spirits withdrew, attempting to squeeze into the hall to flank him. But Carter kept them boxed in, filling the room with his cuts and thrusts, pushing them back with each strike. It was quite impressive. His prowess and devotion to the cause far outstripped his annoyances, though I was perhaps not mature enough to let the latter go unnoted.

  “Dorothea, this is all you!” he said. He’d pushed them up toward the ceiling, clearing the line of fire.

  “Duck!” the Broadway Knight said, and Carter obeyed, just as she fired, the shot tearing into the spirits. I caught my breath as the two worked, watching for the moment where I would need to help, to draw blood once more. But the moment did not come. Dorothea reloaded and fired again, which left the creatures weak enough for Carter to dispatch.

  We ushered the family to their apartment, and Carter once again used his miraculous power to close the man’s wounds. Their questions and worries poured out like a waterfall.

  “What is going on here?” asked the man. The children clutched to his legs, knuckles white, their faces hidden behind his knees.

  “There are terrible creatures here, and a woman more dangerous than any you’ll have met. Take your children to an interior room that can be locked or barred. We will do our best to extricate and banish the forces of darkness and keep your family safe, good sir,” I said.

  “What?” he answered.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Dorothea asked, slipping into what must have been her policewoman voice.

  “Frank.”

  “Frank, I’m Dorothea. I’m undercover NYPD. These people are helping me sweep the building of the criminals. Grab a bat or something and get your family to safety like my associate said. I need you to protect these little girls, just like you were when we arrived. Can you do that for me?”

  The man nodded. He was clearly in shock, but his instincts had already led him to fight rather than abandon the children. He would hold. He had to.

  Dorothea continued to talk the man down, gave him assurance that help was on its way.

  Once the man was stabilized, he led the children to a bathroom and grabbed his best weapon, a hooked cane umbrella. It would have to do.

  I imagined similar scenes playing out throughout the building. Families torn from their everyday lives and tossed into this nightmare, collateral damage incidental to Esther’s true purpose.

  At this rate, the entire building would be having a nervous breakdown within minutes. Perhaps that was part of Esther’s plan. A chaos resonance for her to draw upon in her greater working to seize the Heart. We returned to the stairs once more.

  I stopped at the top floor. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s either good, or really bad,” Carter said.

  Dorothea stopped, then turned and looked out the window at the night sky. The city was like a painting from up here, distant but vibrant. She narrowed her eyes, then looked back to the door above. “It’s bad. She’s here. Watch the Rakshasa. I’ll go first so that they recognize me. Friendly fire isn’t, and all that.”

  Dorothea shouldered the door open, and we followed.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The top floor was more ruined than any of the ones we’d seen before. Entire sections of wall had been torn out, revealing steel girders, exposed wiring, and everywhere, blood.

  Two bodies lay in sections in the central hall. They were both Rakshasa, with gray furred skin and tigerlike faces—pronounced snouts, large whiskers, and amber eyes. One held the haft of a broken spear, the other lay several feet from a sword not unlike Carter’s.

  Carter stopped, leaned against the wall, and dry heaved. Dorothea tucked the neck of her sweater up, and waved her shotgun forward. “Keep going.”

  I clapped Carter on the back, a tiny part of my mind reveling in his discomfort, calling up all the times I’d been exiled from my own room. But Schadenfreude had no place right now. “Hold your nose closed and look up.” I wrapped his free arm around my shoulder, and we moved through the hall as Carter’s distress continued.

  Dorothea stopped at the corner, where the hall broke right and left. She spoke in a language I did not know. I had not even the first sense of how to differentiate Hindi from Gujarati or any of the other hundred or so languages from the subcontinent but trusted that Dorothea would have spoken in English if she wasn’t confident in her proficiency.

  Down the hall to the right, someone answered, presumably in the same language. Dorothea moved down that hall, her shotgun down, but still ready. “She’s come and gone. Bearer wasn’t on this floor. Quickly now, boys.”

  Carter recovered his poise and we jogged down the hall. The other speaker was a small Indian woman carrying a bow, arrows slung at her waist. A cut along her eyebrow was hastily bound with a butterfly bandage, still bleeding, and her bow arm was burned, the shirt gone below the bicep.

  “Bitch’s already been here and gone. We moved the Heart when she hit the tenth floor. If you go fast, you might be able to catch her before she can catch our runner,” she said, out of breath.

  “Where’s the runner headed?” Dorothea asked.

  “Three blocks down, to another tower, 67-21. Sveta is in 5F, she runs that building. Now go!”

  Dorothea spun on the balls of her feet and started jogging again. “Come on, boys. Don’t let a middle-aged woman make you look bad.”

  We thundered down the stairs, more concerned with getting to the Bearer than with catching Esther along the way.

  “I’m done with the goose chase. We go where we know we’re needed, got it?” Dorothea said. I saw no reason, nor had I any interest, in arguing.

  We encountered no resistance leaving the building, though we drew a substantial amount of attention running down the sidewalk. Antoinette caught us on the ground floor, and followed as we sprinted out toward the other tower. Dorothea had hidden her gun, and Carter spirited away his sword, but we were still quite the sight. I scanned the thin crowds for my sister, looking for the confident stride, the gait that resembled the villain’s in Carter’s favorite kind of “slasher” films. It could only be described as inexorable.

  We turned the corner and made our way toward the cluster of towers, assembled like man-made mountains in a huddle, four arranged in a rough circle, two more beyond.

  Sirens cut into the air, startling but not at all unexpected. “Faster, children!” Dorothea said, pouring on the speed. The sirens grew closer, the Dopple
r effect matching their pace as they followed us down the pathway that led past a gatehouse and to a circular drive that connected the four towers. An exit road led to the far two.

  “Which one?” I asked between deep breaths to keep my lungs working, legs pumping.

  “Middle left!” Dorothea said, pointing at the tower.

  A middle-aged black man stepped out of the gatehouse and waved at us, but we dashed straight by him, making our way around the beams designed to stop cars, not people. Which would hopefully slow the police down, as well.

  “What are we going to do about the police?” I asked, speaking between breaths as my calm failed, taking my breath control with it.

  “Don’t get shot!” Dorothea said.

  “Great plan. I’m really reassured!” Antoinette said.

  We made it to the door of the tower, and still no sign of Esther, or of the runner.

  “What if we leave a trap for Esther here?” Carter asked as he opened the first of the two glass double doors leading to the lobby.

  “Too many bystanders,” Dorothea said.

  “What if it could only target her?” Carter asked, a smile on his face as he held open the second door.

  “What could do that?” I asked, coming through last.

  “Let me handle it. Get to the Bearer and get them out of here however you can,” Carter said.

  Dorothea pushed Carter along. “That’s martyr talk. Not the time or place, boy. Get.”

  “It’ll work, I swear!” he said, grounding his feet as Dorothea pushed him through the foyer. Three people were assembled by a bench, a family bundling up in puffed coats. I gave them my best smile. They looked away, focused on their boots.

  “Let’s just get to the elevator,” Antoinette said, moving up and putting a hand on Carter’s shoulder. He relented, moving forward.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT