by Andy Hyland
“So we’re heading north,” Rick said after clearing his throat. Even he could feel the tension in the car, and he was one of the most insensitive people I knew. “Gonna give me any more to go on than that?”
“Head for the George Washington Bridge,” I told him. “Take the I-95 and keep going. West if possible.”
“We’re leaving town?” Arabella asked. “For real?”
“For real. And,” I glanced at the phone Zack was holding, “I want whoever’s doing this to know about it. If we’re gone, even if they follow, they know that hurting people on our home turf won’t work anymore.”
“Nice theory,” said Julie.
“It’s a work in progress. Give it a chance.”
We drove in silence up through Harlem, Upper Manhattan, and Washington Heights. Near my apartment, Arabella let out a little cry and slumped down in her seat. “Up there,” she whispered. “Over to the right.”
We followed her gaze. A solitary figure, high up on a rooftop. Blue jeans, T-shirt. Even from here you tell it was a Host enforcer. The way he stood, utterly still apart from his head slowly turning. “There’s another one,” said Zack, pointing to another figure out of his window. Again, up high, strategically placed.
“Suppose we should have expected it,” said Arabella. “Still a bit of a shock though.”
“It is,” I agreed. “Apart from when I came back from the Fades, have any of you seen those guys around? At all? In the past week?”
After a few moments of brain-racking, everyone shook their heads. “Now you mention it,” said Zack. “I suppose I figured we were too busy hiding to notice if they were actually there. Just relieved that we weren’t seeing them.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. Zack raised his eyebrows but I shook my head. Needed to chew on it for a while. Preferably as far from here as possible. Not long to go now. I’d resisted leaving Manhattan for so long. It was my territory, my home, with all my people in it. But maybe it was time. See a little more of the world before things reached their inevitable end.
We gathered speed as Rick took us up the on-ramp. Traffic was light. Oddly so. “Some accident,” Rick said vaguely. “They’re redirected traffic. Massive problems in mid-town. We’re lucky we came the way we did.”
It was lucky one of us was still switched on enough to think. Zack leaned forward, narrowing his eyes, throwing out his senses as far as possible. Then he threw himself backwards. “Brake!” he screamed. “Rick, stop the car now!”
Rick looked round, and in that second the world splintered. The car didn’t slow or skid or turn. It stopped. Instantly. Forty miles per hour to zero, in a heartbeat. The front of the car crumpled, ramming the engine far back. I only caught a snapshot of Rick’s face as I flew forward. Blood flowing from his mouth. Fear. Disappointment. Instant death. Arabella was sitting opposite me and caught the full force of my shoulder in her stomach. She threw up over my back and I didn’t even care. My head had cracked against a metal strut and black stars were converging into a dark fog crowding in on my vision. Zack was shouting, somewhere off in the distance, so that was good. Julie…Julie was saying something, calling for someone. But that’s all I got.
I came round a few minutes later. My head was thumping, the world was jiggling and a sharp pain in my stomach was repeating itself in time with the way the buildings were jumping. I tried to talk but it came out more like a moan.
“Stay steady man,” said Zack. “I’ve got you. But we’re not slowing down any time soon so get used to it.” The world came into focus a bit more and I realized I was on his shoulder. Or rather one of my ribs was. He was moving at a fair pace for a guy that old carrying baggage, and every step sent another sharp pain shooting through my torso. I made a manly but vain effort not to whimper. “Yeah, suck it up,” he muttered. “At least you’re getting a lift. The rest of us are banged up and still having to move ourselves. Bit of gratitude, you know.” The last words came out as a rasp. He was gasping for breath, so I let him get on with it.
Somewhere in the next two blocks I passed out again.
When I finally woke up for good, it was dark. A single window, covered with a plastic sheet, let in the light of a full moon. “Shit,” I said, my dry throat making my voice crack. “That hurt.”
“You’re healing well,” said Arabella, who was sitting cross-legged halfway across the room. Her face was proudly displaying some major bruising, and she was squinting through one eye, but overall not bad shape considering what we’d gone through. Or at least, what I thought we’d gone through.
“So what hit us?” I asked.
“More like, what did we hit. Pretty brutal, right? The fact is, best we can tell, nothing was actually there.”
“We hit nothing?”
“Well, it was something, obviously. But not visible. We’re thinking some kind of shield. Real Star Trek shit.”
“Host?”
“Gotta be. But we’re safe, for now. About three blocks from your apartment, big building project. The facilities are crap, but we’ve got running water and we’re out of sight.”
“You sure?”
“Well nobody’s come at us yet, so we’re pretty confident, yeah.”
I sat up slowly. “Doesn’t feel too bad. Apart from the headache.”
“Neat trick Josephine showed me a few days ago. I tapped into your magic, diverted a stream and put you into a healing cycle. Given how much energy you’ve got flowing, it didn’t take too long.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, she was great. Just a shame…you know.”
“I know. Where’s Zack? And Julie?”
“Close, don’t worry.”
“Back soon,” came a snarl from the window. A gray, clawed hand was tearing the plastic apart, and a few seconds later one of the gargoyles stepped in. The four armed, tusky guy with the strong line in sarcasm. I was glad he was on our side, but his real loyalty was to Julie, and only Julie.
“Where’s your friend?” I asked.
He waved his hand behind him, pointing vaguely at the sky.
“What happened with the car,” I said after a while. “Wasn’t exactly subtle was it?”
Arabella stood up with a groan and started pacing. “Anything but. Invisible barrier, witnesses. Someone even got a photo of one of the gargoyles pulling Julie out of the wreck. Don’t panic - she wasn’t hurt. Not too much. No more than anyone else. But something like that going public…you can imagine.”
“We’ll have every conspiracy theorist going nuts over this. Maybe this is the end of it. The whole hidden world thing. Maybe it’s going to get blown wide open. What would that do?”
“Feels like the end, doesn’t it?” she asked.
I couldn’t help but agree. Zack chose that moment to march back in, his brow furrowed, deep in thought. “Can’t raise them. Any of them.”
“Who have you tried?” I asked.
“Who haven’t I tried? I know the Union have gone dark. Even if we had Liberty’s phone I doubt he’d answer it now. But the Aware - not like them to refuse a call when I make it. Not when they know I’m with you.”
“Well it sounds like everything’s changing,” I said. “Maybe they’ve finally got it into their heads that I’m bad news.”
“Not likely,” Zack said.
I looked behind him but didn’t see any movement. “Julie not with you?” I asked. He threw Arabella a look and she raised her eyebrows. “Okay,” I said slowly. “I take it I’m not going to like this.”
“None of us like it, exactly,” said Arabella, eyeing the gargoyle carefully as she spoke. “But quite frankly, we didn’t have much of a choice.”
I buried my head in my hands. “Fine, give it to me. What did she do?” Nothing but silence. “Come on, tell me. What did she do?” Still nothing. I looked up. Nobody was speaking. Or moving. Or breathing for that matter. I looked over at the gargoyle. Still as stone. “Hell of a time to come back, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“
Well, what with things being how they are, I thought you could do with me checking in.” Hamon stepped out from behind me. The suit was gone, and he was wearing a scuffed and torn pair of jeans, and a faded leather jacket over a white T-shirt. Still the same blond mop over a pale face, and blue eyes that seemed constantly amused by whatever they beheld.
“Change of look for you.”
He looked down at himself. “Well, when in Rome, you know.”
“You look like an extra from Grease.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Or put it down to the unbearable level of stress that you are currently experiencing. Either will do.”
“If you’re here I take it things are serious.”
“Things are always serious, somewhere. But you’re right. This time that somewhere happens to be here. And now.”
“Is it too much to ask that you actually do something? Apart from sending me, that is. I think we’ve firmly established that I’m not the best tool for this job.” I looked over at Zack, expecting some quip about me being a tool, but of course he said nothing.
Hamon sat down on a chair that hadn’t been there a second ago, and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. “You really are quite something, aren’t you?
“Damn right. Sorry.”
He chuckled. “You stopped a war, Malachi. You killed people to do it, mutilated them with magic, yes, but you stopped the war.”
“Do the ends justify the means then?”
“That’s a crass way of putting it. Better to say that in a situation where there were no good choices, you took the least worst option.”
“That’s…good?”
“It’s life. Sometimes the battles we face, you face, don’t give you pleasant and pristine outcomes. Every now and then you will get to be a white knight on a charger, spurring into the fray with your sword drawn, knowing that the enemies you face are corrupt and awful.”
I smiled. “I do like it when that happens. You can really let go.”
He nodded. “Like that fight with Balam a few months back. Oh, I was watching. I’m far more aware of you than you realize.”
“So what have you come to do? Dispense some amazing gadget that gets us out of this whole mess? Or let me in on some secret that will open it all up? Getting us out of Manhattan would be helpful. Even better, maybe you could have a word with the Host and tell them I’m in the clear. That would be really useful.”
He sat there, tapping his fingers together. “There’s no gadget that could help you now. And as for secrets, you’re so close that telling you any more would spoil it. I’ve seen the look on your face when nobody’s looking at you. You’ve got it sussed. Or very close, anyway. You’re still in for a surprise or two before the end. And you still don’t know why.”
“Fine, but please -”
“Forget leaving Manhattan. They just did you a favor - big mistake on their part. You’re so much better when you’re not running. And as for your final request, I’m absolutely not telling the Host anything. They don’t even know that I’m here. Interfering now would ruin everything I’ve worked towards for so very long. Besides, what they’re facing will be difficult for them.”
“So what are you here for then?” I asked, suddenly feeling so tired. Drained.
He stood walked over, and put his hands on my shoulders. “To tell you you’re doing fine. That of all the places and situations you could be in right now, this is not the worst. That you have not failed. That you have already succeeded to an extent that very few would have believed. And to tell you that the end is close now. So close. Just a while longer.” I looked up at him and he winked. “Good luck, my messenger.”
“Malachi?” Arabella asked. I looked up at her. “You okay? You zoned out for a minute there.”
“Yeah, I’m good. Sorry about that.”
“Why are you smiling?” asked Zack. “This isn’t happy news we’re about to hand over. You got that, right? I wasn’t building you up for nice stuff.”
“No, I get it, please go ahead. What were you saying again?”
A worried glance shot between them, and Arabella crouched down to look at me on my level. “We were throwing some ideas around, trying to figure out what we do now, where we can go, because just between us and the four walls, it’s not looking good.”
“And?”
“And so Julie put the SIM back in the phone. We’d taken it back out after the crash, so nobody could know we were here.” She waited for my reaction, but carried on when I didn’t speak. “There were no contacts showing when she turned it on. Looked like a standard burner.”
“And?”
“And it started ringing,” said Zack. “I answered it. Just silence on the other end. Arabella took it and got the same. Then we passed it to Julie so she could listen.”
“Someone started talking,” said Arabella. “We don’t know who or what. She turned on her heels and stomped off. Zack followed.”
“But she shot me the finger. Told me she’d stay close but she wanted some privacy. Her head’s not right, Malachi. She’s not in the game anymore. I’m worried about her.”
“We kind of really need her at this point,” said Arabella.
I took a moment before replying. “Well she hasn’t run off and left us, we know that. The absence of Host enforcers pinning us to the floor is the big giveaway there.”
Footsteps came from outside the door. Someone walking slowly up wooden stairs. We froze, holding our breath. Julie came in slowly, hands behind her back, looking at the floor.
“Heard you got a phone call,” I said. “Want to share?”
In answer, she took her hands out from behind her. One was holding the phone. The other held a gun, which she pointed straight at my head. “Don’t think about it. I can make this shot before any of you can cast.”
“What did they say?” I asked, keeping my voice level.
“They offered a deal. We can’t let any more people die on account of us, Mal. We just can’t. It’s too much.”
“You really think they’ll keep to their end of the bargain? Seriously?”
She shrugged, and her voice cracked as we spoke. “What else can we do, Mal? Come on, spill it. I’ll give you ten seconds to tell me you can make everything all right.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
We walked a block away from the development we’d been holed up in, just the two of us. I walked in front. Julie was a step behind, and the gun was digging hard into my lower back, a constant reminder about who was in charge. Magic was truly wonderful, and I wouldn’t be without it, but a gun from point blank range isn’t something that a mage can do an awful lot about.
“Stop here,” Julie instructed, and we edged back against the wall, facing the road. Julie shifted position and the gun was now in my ribs.
“How long do we have to wait?” I asked, more for the sake of breaking the silence than anything else.
They must have been waiting just up the road. In less than a minute a limo with dipped headlamps drew slowly up to the sidewalk. The rear door clicked and opened as someone from the inside pushed it out. “That’s our ride,” said Julie, and, me first, with the gun still firmly pressing into my spine, we got in and slid across the long black leather seat, facing forward.
“Bloody hell.” Hamon wasn’t kidding about me being in for at least one big surprise. At first I thought it was a revenant, a reanimated corpse. The skin was slick and pale, almost translucent beneath the glare of the car’s internal lights. There was none of the vigor and joyful enthusiasm that I’d come to expect. None of the intensity. The eyes stared out at me from dark and hollow pits.
“Hello, Malachi,” said Max Lamarchand. “It’s been a while.”
I sat there with my mouth hanging open. He chuckled, and held his hand out to Julie. She passed him the gun and sat back, arms folded. “Thank you my dear. I apologize for having put you through such an unpleasant experience. And more than that. I understand that you’ve been put in very r
eal physical danger over the past few days. Please believe me when I tell you that was never my intention. I shall certainly have some explaining to do to your father when we meet again. As I expect we shall, before too much longer.” He forced a laugh, and something that once came so easily to his lips now made him break out into a harsh cough. Blood tricked down the side of his mouth. He flicked it away with a finger, leaving a smear of red on the white skin. “I expect,” he said, with remarkable understatement, “that you’re wondering what exactly is going on.”
“I think an explanation is well overdue. Whatever you’ve been doing, people have died. Your people as well as mine.”
“Ah,” he said with a rueful smile. “That’s what it comes down to in the end. Your people and my people. As it was in the beginning, is now and shall be for ever more, amen.” He paused, staring out the window, and licked his dry lips before speaking again. “It hasn’t gone exactly according to plan you know. And that’s mostly due to you. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth to say that everything that has happened has all come about because of your failings.”
He stared at me, daring me to respond, and if he hadn’t been holding a gun pointed at my stomach, I truly believe I’d have gone for him, no matter how sick he looked.
“You mentioned an explanation,” I reminded him, and he nodded slowly.
“It began some time ago. About this time last year, in fact. Cancer. It was always going to be a possibility. Family history and all that. Still, no matter how long you’ve lived, you get news like that and it rocks you. It rocks you hard.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and found that I genuinely meant it. “Can I ask what kind?”
He nodded. “The kind that spreads. I’m riddled with it. Bones and lungs and kidneys and liver. I suppose it started somewhere, but finding out the answers to such a question seemed so irrelevant. The doctors told me that even if it had been caught earlier there wasn’t a great deal that could have been done. It is what it is. It is the way of all flesh.”