by Ben Zackheim
“We can work it out later. It looks like we have to get uptown the old fashioned way.”
I tried to collect my thoughts. It wasn’t easy. I felt weaker without the portal in my arsenal. I realized at that moment that I’d become way too dependent on the thing.
“Right. Subway,” I said.
I heard a loud roar in the distance and assumed it was a truck that would fail its next inspection.
“Taxi, dipshit,” Rebel said in her charming way.
“Subway is faster,” I said.
“We’re on the Lower East Side, Kane! The Chrysler building is a J train and a 4 train away! Taxi.”
I watched her walk to the fire escape.
“It’s Friday night, Rebel,” I said. I looked up at the skies. The roar was getting louder. “The Jersey kids… have all the… taxis. What’s that noise?”
Which is when Bonehead swooped down in his fucking jet pack and scooped me off the ground.
He steered us toward Rebel and then grabbed her with his other arm. His jet faltered under the weight. We swooped down off the rooftop and almost slammed into the top of a parked semi. He pulled up just in time as my toes scraped the top of the vehicle.
“Stop swinging, Arkwright,” Bonehead said as my legs struggled to straighten out.
“I like to swing!” I yelled, delighted by the sensation of flying. Yeah, I was pissed that he put my life in danger but, man, this was fun.
“Where to?” he asked us.
“Chrysler Building,” I yelled.
“I can’t get that far on the fuel I have. Where else?”
“Flat Iron Building,” I yelled.
“I’ll try. Hold on.”
He dived down over Houston and used the center line on the street as guidance.
He steered right and barreled up 5th Avenue.
I enjoyed the ride more than I should have. We soared over the tops of the cars, veering in between two buses on 14th Street who were going too slow for our holy-shit-jet-pack! By the time we reached 15th Street we were causing a scene.
It’s hard to cause a scene in New York City.
But people were lining up on the edge of the sidewalk, cheering and snapping pictures of us as we sailed just over their heads. One guy tried to leap off of a car and grab Rebel’s ankle but she kicked him in the face.
Bonehead laughed. I think. I couldn’t tell because he had his headgear on.
We got to the Flat Iron Building on 23rd and he dipped down low enough for us to drop to the sidewalk. We ran, barely staying on our feet, then watched him shoot straight up into the low clouds in the night sky.
“That was fun,” Rebel said.
“I guess he followed us.”
“Maybe he’s not such a bad guy,” she said. She caught me looking at her. “Hey, if you can be best buds with the queen of fucking Vampires then I can get chummy with Bonerface.”
“Bonehead.”
“Whatever. Let’s go.”
We were surrounded by New Yorkers taking pictures. We wove our way through them and went down the stairs to the subway station.
The N and R. My least favorite line. Not because of its crappy history of being late and crowded.
Because of what the N and the R really stands for.
Never and Rarely.
It’s an inside joke in New York City. But New Yorkers don’t understand that the Never and Rarely doesn’t just refer to how often the train runs.
It’s also about how often magic works.
Rebel once told me it was something to do with the granite that New York sat on. Its density blocked some of the more elegant energy flows, which limited the spells you could get away with underground. Next time you’re in New York and you take the N or the R, you’ll see what I mean. It feels like a heavy line, solid, weighted down to the core of the earth.
I’d asked for the Flat Iron building because that subway station has its own secret subway station — one that can take its passengers to anywhere in the city in one stop.
Magic. Don’t ask.
So, yeah, heading down into the N and the R station was risky. Rebel’s skills would be less powerful than usual. We were still formidable, don’t get me wrong, but we were fighting uphill if there was a fight coming our way.
And, of course, there was.
Chapter 7
Rebel and I descended the steps. Her nails tapped on her thighs. My trigger finger started to tingle. If that sounds creepy, good. It creeped me out too.
That’s what it felt like to have 100% confidence that we were walking into trouble.
Rebel scraped the walls with her digits. She was feeling for the trigger that would let us into the underground's underground, the subway's subway - otherwise known as The Wretched Train.
The Wretched Train is the line that catches the hopeless. It’s the basin where the abandoned Supernaturals, Magicists, and monsters settle.
The dregs use The Wretched Train.
They go there to fade or decay or stand until their essence is drained.
Fun stuff.
Of course, there are a lot of them who say, “Fuck this shit!” and fight their fate tooth and nail. Tail and claw. Usually that meant fighting anyone who didn’t belong there. So Rebel and I would be great punching bags for anything that woke up on the wrong side of the urine stain.
“Found it,” Rebel said.
I saw one of her fingernails slide over an invisible bump in the wall. The button that would open the door to The Wretched Train.
Her fingernails were the Metrocard to a very unpleasant trip.
The wall parted. Rebel smiled.
“Ready for the Wretched?”
“Live it every day,” I said.
“Nice,” she said. “We’ll see if you say that in ten minutes after you feel all the hopelessness of life in one horrific moment.”
“Sounds like being partners with y…”
I didn’t even manage to insult her before she was knocked back against a Metrocard machine. She bounced off of it and tumbled down the stairs, landing at a tourist family’s feet.
I ran to the opening, Glocks drawn. I couldn’t see anything except The Wretched Train. It had pulled into the station. The only thing grosser than its flesh-colored surface was its fleshy feel. No one knew what the thing was made out of. No one cared as long as it kept running.
“You okay?” I yelled over my shoulder at Rebel.
“I’ll live,” she said. “What hit me?”
“I haven’t seen anything yet,” I said. She slipped past some native New Yorkers who didn’t give a crap what we were doing. They danced around us. They just wanted to get home.
I peeked around the door.
“Nothing, no one,” I whispered. The platform was empty of people or people-ish things. Even weirder, the station was silent. I would have at least expected to hear the agonizing screams of the poor souls trapped in wretchedness.
Silence.
Rebel and I moved onto the platform together. It was narrow. The floor was just wide enough to allow for two people. Typical New York City. Not an inch wasted.
But when we stepped in, the door behind us slammed shut.
“Great sign,” Rebel said.
“Be ready for anything,” I said.
“Do you get your leader lines from a fucking Popsicle stick?”
“Yeah, I do. You have a problem with that?”
“No, not really. Just checking.”
Then we heard it. Whatever had slammed Rebel against the wall wasn’t going to let us go. I expected to see a ghost emerge from the walls. I hate ghosts. But they seemed to be turning up everywhere. Maybe they’d joined the Vampires to fight for control of this mortal coil. It would be ironic if they won their lives back after the Vampires took over. Poor Planning 101.
But whatever was coming, it didn’t sound like the afterlife. Ghosts usually sound distant, sad, passive-aggressively demanding attention. A bunch of whiners.
No, this sound was more lik
e a drumbeat.
The dark tunnel in front of the train. That was where the pounding was coming from.
Whatever was about to greet us was running fast.
“Ready for a fight?” Rebel asked.
I pulled out my arsenal one by one and smiled.
I aimed into the blackness and I waited.
I could make out the distinct sounds of footsteps now.
But that sound.
“There are a lot of them,” I said.
“Dozens at least,” Rebel said.
I wanted to fire. My finger tip squeezed the trigger to the brink. But I knew better than to fire before identifying the target. Even in tense situations like this where one of us had just been attacked.
Finally we saw them.
Well, we saw their shapes. There were so many that they looked like a mass of living matter.
Many things with two arms and two legs and black clothes.
And blue skin.
“Oh, fuck,” I said.
It was the Blues.
Chapter 8
Last time we’d fought the Blues we’d almost bit it.
Skyler actually did bite it, but our resident Vampire, Fox, bit him. And now we had an immortal Skyler to hound me until I’m dead.
The Blues are a breed of Vampire that feed on anything. Humans, cats, trout, roaches. Whatever has liquid flowing through it, the Blues see it as calorie count. But eating from such a wide variety turns their skin blue for some reason. Their biggest populations are in China, historically, but that was changing.
When we fought them in L.A. and Tibet they did the bidding of a human, Cannon. He wanted to snag Excalibur and use its power to create an empire of his own.
But we took care of him with the sharp end of a ghost army. Thanks to Fox, formerly Lancelot, now undead dude who’s haunted by thousands of years of bad choices.
I’m being mean. He was actually a good guy. He was just annoying.
And he was in love with my partner.
Rebel and I didn’t expect to see the Blues. Especially in the subway of subways.
“Fire Spell,” I said.
“Gee, thanks, Kane,” Rebel shot back. “I don’t know what I’d do without you to remind me of these things.”
They were working their way toward us, twisting around each other so they could be the first one to bite into our necks. But we had other plans.
Jacketed ammo surgery being at the top of my list.
The first row of blue flesh blew apart under the barrage of ammo I slammed them with. My hope was that they’d see the carnage in the front lines and maybe think twice. A moment’s hesitation would let me do the same damage to round number two.
But they didn’t bite. They leaped over their comrades without a lick of hesitation and jockeyed for pole position.
They really, really wanted to get a taste of us.
It felt like it was personal.
“They don’t like us, Kane!” Rebel screamed as she let loose her Fire Spell. Yeah, that’s what we call it. We don’t name our spells after some obscure Latin rooted thing. We name them in plain English. We name them for what they do. It’s one of the only things I admire about the Magicists, as we call humans with magic in their blood. They may be weird, but they stuck to common sense when it came to spell names.
The fire erupted from her forearms, not her hands. She’d perfected the spell with a lot of help from Skyler during our training in Los Angeles and China. Rebel had asked him why they couldn’t leverage more of their flesh to throw the spell and wouldn’t more flesh mean more fire. Skyler looked into it and decided that Rebel was the perfect teenager to test the theory.
Rebel never found anything wrong with that. I just recall wanting to kill the old man for putting my best friend in danger just to improve one fucking spell.
But the revised spell worked.
And, holy shit, did it work on the Blues.
They hadn’t hesitated when I mowed them down with mortal arsenal. But when they came face-to-flame with her spell they parted like a Blue Red Sea. The fire licked its way into the dark tunnel until we couldn’t see the end of it. Rebel’s skin was covered in sweat as the fire flowed from her elbows to her wrists. She clenched her teeth, which looked insanely white in the red-orange light, as the magic flowed from her.
She was giving it her all.
But even her all couldn’t completely tame the blue wave.
The Blues that braved the heat ended up in our laps. In my case, literally. A couple of them knocked me down and we rolled ten yards back. I had to shove their heads away from me as they lunged for my neck like a couple of rabid dogs. Hand-to-hand wasn’t my thing. I was getting much better at it since the Excalibur job, but I still had a long way to go before I could dispense with a couple of Blues who were on top of me.
I slipped a Glock under the armpit of one and fired. His arm went limp in a bloody spray but he still went for my jugular. And the shot just pissed the other one off. He opened his jaw, his sharp teeth just a few inches from my face and bit down. On my pistol.
He almost got my trigger finger but I managed to pull it out just in time. He glared at me with the Glock’s barrel in his mouth. He tried to spit it out but his fangs were stuck in the metal. He shook his head like a wild animal, distracting his fellow Vamp.
I took advantage of the moment and took them both out with my other Glock. Two headshots in two seconds.
“You okay?” Rebel yelled as I shook the Blue’s fangs loose from my pistol. She had a couple of seconds to spare as the Blues slowed their descent on us.
“Close calls, but fine. You?”
“I could do this all night!”
She was lying. Putting on a show for the next round of Vamps about to smack down. She couldn’t let them know that she’d exhausted her magic. Shot her load in one go. It wasn’t like her, but I understood why she did it. The N and the R sucked magic dry so if you can get off a spell, you’d better damn well get off a spell.
We both knew we’d have to fight our way through this, outnumbered 25 to 1 with silent affirmations and a prayer or two to whichever gods came to mind.
“Watch this!” she yelled. I couldn’t watch anything. I was too busy taking shots at Blues while trying to make sure I didn’t hit Rebel by accident.
But I could hear her work.
It sounded revolting, violent, savage, monstrous.
Rebel taught me that blood has a sound outside the body. It’s not just the rush of liquid past wrecked flesh. It’s also the trip from the air to the floor. She told me that our ears could hear the impact of blood on the walls and floors around us before they actually hit. It’s like the echo of death before it happens.
She was right.
“Rebel!” I yelled. I could see her red hair twirling around in the blue mass ahead of me.
“Busy!”
“Can you see an open door on the train?”
“I can see down the throat of a fucking Vampire at the moment!”
So that was it. Something switched on inside me that gave in to the rush of death.
I abandoned all common sense.
I shot. I fought. I kicked. I screamed. I was lost in the battle, a puppet of Ares or Thor or Chiyou or whoever you believe in.
My point of being was to be fighting.
And I was doing a damn good job of it.
Until three Blues broke past Rebel’s slashing fingernails and in perfect unison jumped at me, mouths open, black eyes wide and focused on my blood flow.
I was a goner.
“KANE!” Rebel yelled.
The giant fist saved me.
Chapter 9
Behind.
Someone was behind me.
I could hear him. I could smell him. Boy, could I smell him.
And I could see the results of his massive, powerful swipes, and punches and slaps.
The Blues were piling on top of each other now, dropping in bundles of flesh from the sheer force of the blows.
I didn’t look behind me to see who it was. I had my suspicions but I didn’t want to take my eyes off the charging Vamps.
First, so I could defend myself.
Second, because I enjoyed watching their heads pop off. A Vampire can only be killed with wood through the heart or the force of the sun, sure. But they could be incapacitated permanently with zero heads on shoulders.
The hand beheaded at least twelve Vamps before I found a spare second to turn and see Dino behind me.
Dino, the troll.
Dino, the airplane-obsessed troll with a sweet apartment and a thing for Rebel.
Why did everyone have a thing for my fucking partner?
“Dino!” I yelled.
“Kane!” he yelled back. My yell was more “Holy-Shit-Thank-Thor” while his was more “Yo, how you doin’, bro?”
“Think you could help us get on the train?”
“Sure! I’ll clear a path,” he said.
I followed him through the Vampires, walking over his victims piece by piece. The rush was waning. Rebel was on the other side of a wall of Blues, but we’d meet up with her in a few seconds.
“Ew,” Dino said, tip-toeing around a particularly bubbly pile of guts. I had to smile. A ten foot troll on tip-toes is not something you get to see every day.
“These are Blues, aren’t they?” Dino asked.
“Yeah, we ran into them a few months back,” I said. “In L.A. we...”
“Hi Rebel!" Dino shouted, interrupting me. He had on his biggest smile. If you've ever seen a Great White shark emerge from the black waters with its mouth open and its black eyes rolled back then you'll know what a troll smile is like.
"Dino," she said like she was doing roll-call.
"How you doin', lady?" he asked as he jammed his fist into a Vampire's neck.
"Behind you," she said.
Dino swung his arms around and took out two more.
Th troll glanced down at me and whispered, "She talk about me at all?"
"Can you just..." I gestured to the last of the Vampires, who shoved at each other to get at us.
He let out a roar that scattered them. They ran into the walls and ran onto the tracks to escape the troll.
"Nice work," Rebel said. "Quite a roar you got there."