Storm Demon

by Gregory Lamberson

  He climbed into the glassless window, turned around, grabbed the sill, and dangled over the edge. The wind blew him like a flag, and when he let go he dropped at an angle but managed to land on his feet, bending his knees to absorb the impact, and not twist his ankle on the sharp abutments. It took only seconds for the rain to rinse the dust off his running suit and then the limestone residue that replaced it.

  Ripper landed a few feet away.

  Turning, Jake took in the scope of the destruction. The two-story layer of rubble covered Twenty-third Street up the block and beyond the intersection at Madison Avenue. A swirling haze permeated the air even with the wind and rain. Using his stump against the facades of the buildings for balance, Jake moved across the rubble, testing each step before setting his feet down. The rain seeped through the crevices in some areas and pooled in others but made all the limestone slippery. At least they didn’t have to swim yet.

  When they reached Madison Avenue Jake stopped. The debris covered the avenue beyond Twenty-fourth Street, and the haze coupled with the rain prevented him from seeing how many smaller buildings had toppled, but he guessed the immense Metropolitan Life North Building’s collapse had taken out half the neighborhood. The lack of any response from emergency services or residents of the buildings frightened him.

  How many lives?

  Almost in response, lightning lit the sky.

  Jake gazed at the dull outline of the Tower, which had survived unscathed.

  Of course.

  Thunder crashed, and they descended the rubble and waded into four feet of water.

  The rubble acted as a dam, preventing the eastern current from taking hold for at least one hundred yards. They had one half of one long block to go. The Flatiron Building became visible, which was when Jake saw a gray shark fin gliding in their direction.

  By the time Maria reached Eleventh Avenue, she was too exhausted from swimming to veer to the sidewalk entrance to the High Line. She stopped kicking altogether, hoping to body surf, but the rain pushed her underwater.

  Resurfacing, she forced herself to swim freestyle, gulping for air, and aimed for her destination. She managed to get above the sidewalk, then swim past the High Line’s elevator and kick harder, propelling herself to the stairway’s metal railing, which she threw her arms around. She stayed there for a moment, gathering enough energy to pull herself out of the water, then climbed up the stairs. When she reached the top, facing the second and third stories of buildings along the skyway, the wind chilled her wet body and she shivered.

  Maria walked uptown, noting flooded streets, darkened windows, and no population. Did anyone inside the skyscrapers see her? It didn’t matter; she only cared that Shana and Jake were okay.

  And Edgar, she thought. She had not put Shana or Jake in danger, but she had asked Edgar to go help Jake. If anything happened to him, it would be on her head.

  She walked faster, breaking into a jog, the wind

  assailing her.

  “Jesus,” Ripper said.

  The shark fin knifed past them and circled back.

  “Move,” Jake said.

  They waded faster, bouncing toward a Jetta parked at the curb. Using both hands, Ripper sprang onto the hood of the vehicle, landing in two inches of water. He turned and grabbed Jake’s outstretched hand with both of his. Jake set one foot on the Jetta’s front tire as Ripper pulled him up, then the other on the hood. He looked over his shoulder as the shark fin submerged into the murky water.

  Ripper climbed onto the roof of the car, and Jake scrambled after him. The wind knocked them to their knees, and they helped each other up. Ripper moved the ATAC 3000 into firing position, and Jake took his hunting knife from the sheath on his boot. Standing back to back, they turned in a circle on top of the car, searching the water for the shark, but the rainfall on the surface made that impossible. Ripper grunted, and Jake peered over the edge of the car. Lightning flickered; thunder growled.

  The shark exploded out of the water, rocketing toward Jake and causing him to flinch. In the instant it took him to realize the shark had human arms and hands, the gray creature seized his throat, its momentum driving him and Ripper off the other side of the car. Before he struck the water, he saw the monster had long feminine hair, a shark fin protruding from its back, and a chest as flat as a boy’s. From the waist up it appeared humanoid, and from the waist down it had the body of a shark.

  A mermaid.

  Cold water enveloped Jake, and his back touched the sidewalk with sandpapery fingers around his throat. The shark woman opened her mouth six inches from his face, revealing sharp teeth arranged in a jagged pattern, her eyes death black.

  Jake pushed the shark woman’s head away and drove the knife into her snout, drawing blood that clouded the water. Maintaining his grip on the handle, he held the head and its teeth back, and with his stump he knocked one of her arms aside, forcing her hand to relinquish his throat. He couldn’t shake the other hand loose, but he twisted his body free and stood, raising his head above the water as Ripper scrambled back on top of the car.

  The shark woman rose as well, still gripping Jake’s throat with one hand. Lightning filled the sky, and Jake got a better look at her. Five gill slits sucked at the air on each side of her fat neck, and she had no chin. She swung her right hand at him, but he knocked it aside and locked her arm in his armpit, forcing her to struggle like a fish on a hook. Translucent shields slid over her eyes, protecting them. She released his throat with her other hand, which she clamped over his wrist, trying to force him to let go of the knife.

  “Shoot her,” Jake said.

  Kneeling on the car’s roof, Ripper struggled to aim the ATAC 3000. “I’ll tear you both to pieces!”

  The shark woman snapped her jaws at Jake, gnashing her teeth.

  “Break the window,” Jake said to Ripper. He jerked the knife out of her snout and plunged it into the gills on her left side. Blood spilled over them. The shark woman thrashed and Jake feared she would escape.

  Dropping to his knees below the surface, he braced his stump against her flesh where a human female’s pelvis would have been. Still gripping the knife, he rose once more, lifting the hybrid over his head.

  Ripper smashed the driver’s side window with the stock of his weapon, and Jake hurled the monster six feet away, where it splashed. He still held the knife. Without waiting to see her reaction, he swam toward the car.

  Ripper fired the ATAC over Jake’s head, tearing up the water. “Hurry,” Ripper said, wild eyed.

  Setting his hand on the car door, Jake dove headfirst through the missing window. He raced to open the passenger door, hoping to trap the creature inside, but the shark woman vaulted in after him, her tail propelling her forward. He turned over on his back just as she landed on him, blood spilling from her gills.

  Using his stump, he pushed her head back, then drove the knife up through her lower jaw and into the roof of her mouth, nailing it shut. The shark woman thrashed around, beating her tail against the steering wheel, and Jake reached behind him and opened the passenger door. He slid out from beneath her, pushing himself off the car underwater, and kicked the door shut.

  Raising his head above the water, he saw that Ripper had climbed off the car and stood aiming the ATAC 3000 through the broken window. He opened fire, a burst of automatic gunfire strafing the shark woman’s body, blood squirting through the punctures.

  The creature continued to thrash, turning the water inside the car red. Then she stopped moving and sank, and when her body rose to the surface, it transformed: the fin receded into her back and the tail separated into legs.

  Jake opened the door, sank his hand into the dead woman’s hair, and yanked her head back. He recognized her because he’d had sex with her: Chloe Sanderstein, the VP of Eternity Books, who had appeared to him as Sheryl.

  Ripper peered inside the car and gasped.

  “Lilith has the power to turn people into animals,” Jake said. Katrina had turned Edgar into a
raven, and Lilith had turned men into cats.

  Edgar had made it only five blocks down Second Avenue when he stopped at a streetlight to catch his breath. With rain pouring off the bill of his NYPD baseball cap, he reached inside his poncho, opened his shoulder bag, and removed the doggie bag Joyce had made for him: chicken-fried steak and black-eyed peas. He wolfed down the soul food in the middle of the hurricane, then discarded the tin tray and watched it wash away.

  He checked his watch. It was 7:00 p.m. Two days ago at this time, the sun still shone; now darkness prevailed, made all the more pervasive by the lack of electricity in the buildings. He doubted he would ever have so much elbow room again in his life. He had no idea how he was going to make it all the way down to Twenty-third Street, then over to Jake’s building between Madison and Park Avenues.

  I’m not going to do it sitting here, he thought, his teeth chattering.

  Disengaging from the light pole, he resumed swimming toward Fifty-fourth Street.

  Only thirty-one blocks to go . . .

  Cold water slapped him in the face and he spat it out. He did the sidestroke, which he preferred, and switched sides after fifty yards. The water had reached six feet. Now it was harder to rest when he felt too tired to go on.

  A droning rose over the furious sound of the wind and rain. It sounded like a lawn mower, and he searched the sky for a helicopter. Light swept over him and he turned around, treading water. The current struck him in the face, and he saw a spotlight heading in his direction.

  A boat!

  Edgar waved his arms over his head and called out, slipped beneath the surface, kicked off the sidewalk, and waved his arms again. The searchlight swept over him, and he continued to tread water at its center.

  The boat drew closer, the light brighter, and the sound of the engine stopped as a small powerboat coasted toward him. The pilot, who wore a yellow rain slicker, threw a white life preserver on a line in his direction.

  Edgar grabbed the preserver, and the pilot hauled him over to the boat, which rocked as he pulled him aboard, threatening to capsize. Edgar fell into six inches of water on the bottom.

  “What are you doing out here?” the man said in a

  Cuban accent. “Getting a newspaper?”

  Edgar clambered onto the bench near the outboard motor. “I’m going to help a friend. What are you doing

  out here?”

  “Looking for dumb people to rescue.”

  “That’s mighty kind of you, since no one else is bothering.”

  “I’ve seen NYPD boats in the water, but most of them went to where the storm hit the hardest. No one’s out

  patrolling like me. Where are you headed?”

  “Twenty-third Street.”

  “East or west?”

  “Straight ahead.”

  “You want a lift?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “I’m Carlos.”

  “Edgar.”

  Carlos set a metal coffee can before him. “Start bailing or we aren’t going to get very far.”

  A lightning bolt jagged the sky as Jake and Ripper swam across Broadway to the construction awning attached to the Flatiron Building and grabbed the aluminum rods. The plywood that had surrounded the top of the awning had blown away, leaving corrugated metal. Limestone dust from the collapsed buildings clung to the plywood. Each man held on to a vertical pole and swung his legs onto a horizontal bar. Sitting above the sidewalk, with only their legs in the water, they faced each other.

  “What do you think?” Ripper said.

  “There could be a trap waiting for us in the lobby or in the stairway.”

  “She could turn us into one of those things, couldn’t she?”

  Jake remembered when he had discovered Edgar in raven form; Katrina had left a candle burning on a coffee table a few feet away from where the blackbird had revealed itself within a pile of Edgar’s clothes. “Probably.”

  “So?”

  Jake looked at the corrugated ceiling, which the rain assaulted.

  “You want to climb a twenty-two-story building during a hurricane?”

  “Not the whole building, just one or two floors.”

  Sighing, Ripper stood on the bar and slid his hand up and down the vertical support. “I don’t know about this. The metal is slippery.”

  Jake gestured at the water around them. “It’s not like we’ll hit the sidewalk if we fall.”

  “You go first.”

  “Very funny.”

  Ripper reached for a short, angled bar that supported the awning. “Get over here and help me.”

  Jake couldn’t reach Ripper’s section of the skeleton, so he hopped down, waded across the water, and climbed beside him. Ripper grabbed the support and walked up the vertical bar, taking the rain full in his face. Jake put his hand on Ripper’s bottom and gave him a shove, and Ripper pulled himself up.

  Jake swung his leg around the support, his back to the rain, and waited for Ripper to extend a hand. He squeezed the hand and walked up as Ripper had, and Ripper pulled him onto the awning, then they ran to the side of the building facing Broadway. The only problem was that the downstairs lobby was two stories high, so the next row of windows was another floor up. A lightning bolt stitched the sky and thunder coughed.

  “Great plan,” Ripper said. “I suppose you want me to go first again.”

  “I’ll never make it on my own with one hand.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  Lightning continued to flash as Ripper climbed the limestone face of the building, which had plenty of sculpted texture to grab on to: step, handhold, step, handhold, repeat. The wind scattered his dreadlocks but did not blow him off. When he reached the ledge beneath the second-floor windows he grabbed it and allowed his legs to dangle straight down.

  Holy crap, Jake thought.

  Ripper pulled himself straight up, his head passing the ledge, and worked his way up on his arms so his crotch brushed the ledge. He swung his right leg onto the ledge, and Jake thought he would fall. But Ripper leaned toward the large window before him, wedged his arms between the limestone around it, and stood on his right leg, dragging his left leg behind him. He turned and looked down. “It’s a piece of cake, you asshole. Show me how it’s done.”

  Frowning, Jake climbed: step, handhold, step, repeat. The wind howled in his ear, but before long he reached the ledge.

  “If I take your hand we’ll both fall.”

  Jake squinted in the rain. “See if the window’s open.”

  Ripper reached behind him. “Negative.”

  “Break it.”

  With slow, cautious movements, Ripper removed the ATAC 3000 from around his head and held the thick barrel in both hands. “If I don’t do this right I’ll fall anyway.”

  “So make sure you do it right.”

  Ripper drew a breath, then drove the weapon straight back into the window as hard as he could, shattering a portion of the window. Leaning forward, he balanced on the edge, then stood erect. He turned his back to the street, reached inside, and raised the window. Then he climbed inside and turned around.

  The wind blew and his fingers burned with pain, but Jake did not lose his grip. It took him three cycles to reach the point below the ledge, and by then Ripper stood halfway inside the second-floor office with one hand extended. Jake had to let go of the limestone to grab Ripper’s hand. If he missed he would fall. Even if he caught Ripper’s hand he might fall.

  “Don’t be a pussy. I want to get dry.”

  Jake took three breaths, stared at Ripper’s hand, then reached for it. Their hands locked.

  Ripper grabbed Jake’s wrist with his other hand. “I’ve got you.”

  Grimacing, Jake walked up the side of the building, and Ripper heaved him over the ledge. Ripper backed inside, pulling Jake in after him. Jake fell face forward onto carpet in the dark office, grunting from the impact. Grateful to be out of the storm, he gasped for breath.

  Ripper turned his back
to the window and became a mild silhouette. “Don’t expect me to pick you up off that floor, too.”

  Jake sat up. “I got it.”

  “It’s about time you started pulling your own weight.”

  A shriek filled the office.

  Jake jumped and Ripper spun to face the window. A flash of lightning silhouetted a dark shape. A creature with an enormous wingspan reached inside with two clawed feet like those of a chicken and dug them into Ripper’s face.

  Ripper seized the creature’s ankles and screamed as it beat its wings and retreated from the building, pulling him out the window.

  Jake leapt for Ripper’s legs but he groped empty air, then slammed against the window’s edge, rain spattering his face.

  Ripper and the Harpy spiraled downward with Ripper’s scream trailing them.

  Jake held his breath, waiting to see if Ripper would clear the awning below.

  The Harpy’s six-foot-wide wing smashed against the awning, which Ripper plummeted past.

  Jake felt momentary relief until the rectangular top of a metal traffic signpost burst through Ripper’s back, impaling him. On his knees, Jake recoiled and dug his fingers into the sill.

  Ripper’s body slid down the wobbling signpost into the water and half floated there. The Harpy splashed beside him, its wing broken, and thrashed. The she monster threw its head back and attempted to fly but couldn’t.

  Ripper’s soul flickered and rose from his body and faded.

  Golden light, Jake thought.

  Seizing the ATAC 3000 from where Ripper had left it, he switched on the scope’s night vision function and located the monster below.

  The distorted face of Jada Brighton, the director of business development who had impersonated Katrina, snarled between the wings, her hands located halfway along the top of each wing. Her angry eyes reflected the lightning flashing in the sky.

  Jake squeezed the trigger, shooting her with enough rounds to reduce her monstrous wings to tattered flaps of flesh. He continued to fire until the ATAC clicked.