His eye fluttered open.
She brushed the wet hair out of his face. “A lucky one, too.”
Jake closed his eye, and Laurel continued to vomit in the bathroom.
Maria crossed the reception area and opened the office door.
Ripper and Carrie turned to her.
“Help me get Jake into the bedroom.”
“Is he okay?” Carrie said.
“As far as I can tell.”
The three of them went to the sofa bed, and Maria and Ripper pulled him to his feet and supported him between them. As they walked him toward his office, Laurel emerged from the bathroom, looking nauseous and fearful.
Jake looked at her, then his head slumped forward.
Carrie opened the bedroom door, and Maria and Ripper dropped him onto his cot. Maria made him comfortable and drew the sheet over him. Laurel stood in the doorway as silent as a shadow. Thunder rumbled and crashed.
“How much rest does he need?” Maria said.
Laurel spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper. “At least a few hours.”
“All we have to do is wait out this hurricane,” Carrie said. “Right?”
Laurel touched her forehead. “This storm isn’t going to end until Lilith gets what she wants.”
“You mean Lilian, right?”
“Her real name is Lilith, and she’s going to kill you all.”
Ripper moved closer to Laurel. “As in Lilith from the Bible?”
Laurel’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, and she collapsed onto the floor. Ripper and Carrie ran to her side. Moaning, her eyes fluttered open without focus.
“Get her some water,” Maria said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Carrie ran to the kitchen.
“What do you know about Lilith?” Maria said to Ripper.
Cradling Laurel, Ripper helped her sit up. “She’s a succubus or a demon or something.”
Maria’s body turned numb. She had seen the demon Kalfu in a summoning circle on Pavot Island, and Jake had mumbled about Cain and Abel in his sleep. She glanced at Jake, unconscious on the cot.
Carrie returned with a paper cup filled with water, which she held out to Laurel. “Here.”
Laurel gulped the water and sighed. “I need to lie down.”
Ripper helped her to her feet.
“We’re going to run out of beds,” Carrie said.
They were halfway across the office when lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and the lights went out, including the TV screens. An emergency flashlight plugged into the wall behind Jake’s desk fired a beam at the ceiling, the light reflecting on their faces.
“The emergency generator should come on in a minute,” Laurel said in a drowsy voice.
“Wrong,” Carrie said. “Jackie checked up on us while you were passed out, and he said the basement’s flooded. That generator isn’t coming on.”
“Then we’ll just have to use candles,” Laurel said. “Get some out of Jake’s bottom desk drawer.”
Maria unplugged the flashlight and aimed it at the desk. She opened the bottom drawer and removed a shoe box, which she set on the desktop and opened, revealing white candles in brass holders piled on top of each other.
“It’s creepy how you do that,” Carrie said to Laurel.
Maria picked up the phone on Jake’s desk and listened for a dial tone. “The telephone lines are down, too.” She pointed the flashlight at the doorway ahead. “Let’s get her down and light these.”
In the reception area Maria shone the flashlight on the sofa bed, which Laurel climbed onto.
Carrie lit a candle and set it on her desk, then lit more. “This whole office is going to smell like vanilla.”
Maria took out her phone and pressed a number.
Bernie answered midway through the first ring. “Hello?”
“Just making sure you got back okay.”
“I’m wringing myself out as we speak.”
“What’s it like there?”
“Crowded, just about everyone from the precinct who’s on duty is here. The power went out but the genie kicked in. What about you?”
“It’s crowded here, too. No power.”
“How’s Jake?”
That’s a good question, she thought. “Resting but better. Did L.T. ask about me?”
“He accepted my explanation at face value when I told him you were helping civilians. He’s got a lot to deal with.”
“I want to save my phone’s power.”
“Copy that. Stay dry.”
“You, too.” Maria ended the call, then shone the flashlight at Laurel. “Fill us in on Lilith.”
Laurel raised one hand before her eyes, shielding them from the light, which Maria aimed at the ceiling for reflection.
“In Jewish mythology, she was Adam’s first wife. She refused to obey him and became a demon known for stealing infants from their cradles and causing pregnant women to miscarry. She appears in several religions, always with a different history and purpose. I never suspected that Lilith walked the earth in human form.”
“Now you know that’s her story because you read Jake?”
“He figured it out last night, but he didn’t tell me.”
“Why not?”
Laurel swallowed. “He doesn’t trust me completely.”
“That’s great,” Carrie said. “We’re in this mess because of you, and Jake doesn’t even trust you.”
“You can ask him to explain his motives. None of it matters now.”
“I’m not buying it. No one can be that old.”
“And no one can control the weather. You can refuse to accept it if you want, but that won’t change our situation. It’s just a matter of time before Lilith kills everyone in this office.”
“Except you.”
“She wants me alive.”
“Then the answer seems pretty simple to me.”
“She’ll assume you know her secret, and she can’t allow that. Even if I give her what she wants, she won’t allow you to live.”
“I knew I should have stayed in school.” Carrie went over to the window, where lightning silhouetted her.
“It’s not just us,” Maria said. “Other people were killed by those tornadoes yesterday, and more will die in this hurricane.”
“I know,” Laurel said in a weak voice.
“I’m not going down without a fight,” Ripper said.
“What is that?” Carrie said at the window.
Maria joined Carrie, followed by Ripper. Gazing through the rain striking the window, she saw a dark shape as wide as a semi moving through the water, which had risen high enough to hide the tires of the cars parked below.
Two feet deep and rising, she thought. Which meant the water on the sidewalk was a foot and a half deep.
The dark patch within the water moved west, like a submarine. The rain continued to slam the water like gunfire, but the surface of the water above the moving shadow writhed with a life and texture of its own.
“Rats,” Maria said.
“Hell no,” Ripper said.
Carrie shook her hands in the air. “Ew, I hate rats.”
“The flood must have driven them out of the subway tunnels and the sewers,” Maria said.
Laurel sat up. “There are eight million of them in New York.”
“I heard there are four rats for every person,” Ripper said. “That makes thirty-two million.”
A billboard on the roof of a building adjacent to the New York Edition Hotel blew over, balanced on the building’s edge like a teeter-totter, then slid off, tumbling end over end until it struck a streetlight, then whipped down at an angle, demolishing a parked Camry with a sound akin to thunder.
Pressing her forehead against the windowpane, Carrie squinted. Lightning flashed and she screamed.
“What is it, baby?” Ripper said.
Thunder shook the building.
“Look down there!”
Maria pressed one side of her face against the glass for a better loo
k and waited for another flash of lightning. When it came, a nauseous feeling seized her stomach: a dark wave clung to the wall of the building, ascending it at a steady speed. Only when the wind blew dozens of scurrying black shapes off the building’s façade did she realize the army of wet rats had already reached the second floor.
Leaning over Carrie with his hands on her shoulders, Ripper stared below them. “There are hundreds of them.”
“They’re really hanging on, what with the wind and rain in their ugly little faces,” Maria said.
“Maybe they’re just trying not to drown,” Carrie said.
“This is the only building they’re climbing, and hundreds more of them are swimming with the current,” Ripper said.
Laurel joined them at the window. “Rats have small brains so they’re easy to control. Lilith sent them.”
Maria unlocked the window and raised it. Raindrops ricocheted off the sill and struck them.
“What are you doing?” Ripper said.
“There could be any number of ways for them to get in here,” Maria said. “I don’t intend to let them turn us into Swiss cheese, do you? You take this window. I’ll take the one in Jake’s office.”
“What about me?” Laurel said. “I can handle a gun.”
“Really?” Maria turned to Carrie. “Give her the .22.”
Carrie pulled the .22 from its holster. “I was just getting used to it.”
“Keep it. I can handle bigger.” Grabbing two candles, Laurel went into Jake’s office.
“Okay, then,” Maria said. “Carrie, you stay here with Ripper, and Laurel and I will take the other window. Don’t waste ammo. Wait until they reach the third floor before you start shooting.”
One candle burned on the safe and the other on Jake’s desk when Maria entered. Laurel removed the painting from the wall and plucked a Beretta from its mount inside the wall. She selected a magazine from the mini-shelves beside the gun racks and slapped it into the Beretta’s grip.
“You have handled guns before,” Maria said, staring at Jake’s hiding place.
“I’ve never fired one in my life, but I have all Jake’s experiences at my fingertips.”
“I didn’t need to hear that. Bring the ammo over here.” Maria raised the blind and then the window, and the roaring wind blew rain inside at her.
Laurel set two magazines on the floor and stood beside her.
Maria stuck her head outside, and the wind plastered her wet hair to her skull. The rats had passed the second floor and were just reaching the third.
Ripper watched her from the other window fifteen feet away, his dreadlocks dancing in the wind like Medusa’s snakes.
Nodding to him, she drew her Glock and crouched with it in both hands, her armpits pressed against the window’s edge as the rats clawed their way past the third-floor windows.
Lightning filled the sky, illuminating the rodents and lighting their eyes. Their heads bobbed up and down, their motion making it almost impossible for her to separate them, their squeaks rising on the wind, which buffeted her. The sky went dark and she fired into the oncoming horde. Blood spewed from the undulating mass, and a rat jerked into the air. Thunder cracked, and the wind carried the black shape away, depositing it into the water below.
Ripper fired as well and another rat dropped. Crouching beside Maria, Laurel fired, blowing a rat through the air.
Jake emerged from the bedroom. “What’s happening?”
“We’ve got a rat problem,” Maria said.
Laurel drilled another rat, and Maria fired again and again, blasting wet furry creatures from the wall.
“So we’re hiding from them in the dark?” Jake said.
“We’ve also got a power problem.”
Laurel fired again, exploding a rat’s head. Before the creature hit the water, she picked off another. Ripper and Carrie opened fire at the same time, whittling down the rats’ ranks.
Jake stood before his exposed secret compartment. “Where’s my gun?”
“It’s in the front room somewhere, but you’re sitting this one out,” Maria said. She and Laurel fired in tandem, wasting vermin. Still the rats advanced, their scaly claws digging at the stone façade. “Shoot faster!”
The guns barked, spilling blood, and rats fell spinning into the water. Others surfaced, replenishing their numbers. The howling wind devoured the sound of the gunfire.
Maria’s gun clicked. “Reloading!”
Carrie ran into the office and almost collided with Jake. “Ripper needs more ammo.”
Jake took out his last box of ammo for the Thunder Ranch and handed it to her.
“So do I,” Carrie said.
He handed her two more magazines for the .22. “That’s all I have.”
“Reloading!” Laurel said as Carrie took off running.
At the window, Maria made a disgusted sound as four large rats crawled closer to the window. She and Laurel picked them off, blood spraying into the falling rain, but she got a good look at the rat’s black eyes and sharp teeth and wanted Jake to take over. A fat rat crawled up the wall between the two windows as if they couldn’t see it.
“Don’t shoot,” Ripper yelled to Carrie.
“I’ve got it,” Maria said.
Turning in the window, so her back was over the bottom of the frame, Maria targeted the rat, which had clawed its way above the window, just as it leapt into the air, diving at her face. The dark shape blotted out the falling rain for a moment, and she squeezed the trigger, tearing the rat to pieces and altering its trajectory so it fell away from her.
Laurel stopped firing and grabbed Maria’s shoulder. “Get up!”
Turning her head, Maria glimpsed three rats within two feet of her. With her heart hammering, she twisted her body away from the window.
Laurel fired until her gun clicked again. “Reloading!”
Maria took up her position again as half a dozen rats reached the same point two feet below the window, their black eyes reflecting the lightning and their squeaks piercing. She opened fire, cutting their number in half, and then she ran out of ammo as well. She slapped her last magazine into her Glock. “Reloading!”
Ripper threw his right arm against the wall and fired a series of shots that decimated three more rats. “Reloading!”
Laurel returned to action first, just as a rat climbed onto the window and hissed at them. She aimed at the rat at point-blank range and blew it into the rain.
Maria shot the remaining two and took out several following in their claw steps.
“I’m out,” Carrie said.
“Reloading!” Ripper said.
Jake opened the safe and took out his Glock.
“You don’t need that,” Maria said, massaging one wrist. “They’re gone.”
“And we’re practically out of ammunition,” Jake said, “which was Lilith’s plan.”
25
Alice sat watching the news on TV, and Shana lay on the floor, coloring a page in a Dora activity book. The wind howled, rain pattered the windows, and the lights in the condo flickered. Shana didn’t know what a hurricane was, but she didn’t like thunder and lightning. When her mother was alive and they lived together in Far Rockaway, they cuddled at night during storms. Now that she lived with Aunt Alice, she slept alone no matter how frightened she became; Alice didn’t want to cuddle with her, and Shana felt the same way about her aunt.
“One hour after Hurricane Daria landed on Manhattan, most of the island’s east side is without power, city streets are flooded with two feet or more of water, and the entire subway system within the borough’s limits has been shut down. In a surprising development, so far the hurricane’s effects are restricted to Manhattan. Projections that Daria would cause havoc in the outer boroughs have not been realized, and meteorologists are at a loss to explain why the storm is moving in a circular pattern around Manhattan proper, making escape and rescue impossible.”
Clucking her tongue, Alice reached for the remote
control. “What the hell are they talking about?”
The next station showed a radar map overlooking the region as a weatherman said, “As you can see, we have rain across the city, but miraculously the hurricane itself is
confined to Manhattan, which it appears to be circling—”
The screen turned black, and the lights went off, reducing Alice to a silhouette.
Shana sat up, a tremor of fear running through her body.
“Goddamn it,” Alice said. A moment later the blue glow from the screen of her phone illuminated her face as she rose from the sofa. “Stay here.”
Enough dull gray light shone through the windows for Shana to see her aunt as the thick woman crossed the hallway and entered the kitchen. Shana sat on her heels and waited.
Alice opened and closed cupboards. “Where is that flashlight? Did you put it somewhere?”
“No, Aunt Alice.”
Shana missed her mother more than ever and found it impossible to shut out the mental picture of her father, Papa Joe, shooting her in the head so the zombies wouldn’t get her. He would have killed Shana, too, if her older cousin Malachai and his beautiful girlfriend, Katrina, hadn’t stopped him. Both her parents were killed that day.
Alice jerked a drawer open and rummaged through its contents. “Here it is. I don’t know how it got here.” She switched on the flashlight and swept a bright beam across the kitchen, then returned to the living room and held out her cell phone. “Take this in case you need to go to the bathroom, but make sure you don’t drop it. Break it and you’ll be in for a world of pain.”
“Yes, Aunt Alice.”
A banging on the front door caused Shana to jump.
“Who the hell is that?” Alice headed back into the hall, disappearing along with the light.
Shana rose and padded over to the edge of the hall and peeked around the corner as her aunt stood at the door.
“Who is it?”
“Kevin,” a muffled voice said.
Alice turned the flashlight so it filled Shana’s face, blinding her. “Go to your room.”
Aunt Alice always sent her to her room when she had visitors, except for Ramses, who stayed here often. Shana knew better than to disobey, and, as she hurried to her room using the phone for guidance, she heard Alice draw the chain lock across the door. Shana entered her room and started to close the door but stopped, leaving it open a crack so she could see Alice’s visitors.
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