Nephilim

by Barrowman, John; Barrowman, Carole;

  A barefoot, homeless woman was pushing a shopping cart piled with black garbage bags out of the Art Institute’s south garden and on to the sidewalk. She yelled up at the prowling lion, one of two huge bronze lions in different poses that flank the wide entrance.

  A lone pedestrian walked out of Millennium Park and headed west, his collar popped, his hands deep in his camel-coat pockets, a stocking cap on his head. Sotto was watching the pedestrian with interest when, without warning, two joggers cut across the thin line of traffic in front of his Caddy. He hit his brakes and then his horn. The pedestrian kept walking without a backwards glance.

  ‘Way to be stealthy, man,’ Sotto muttered as he cruised past the building, slapping his hand on the wheel and cursing himself.

  He looked at his watch. They should be here soon. Rémy had called from a pay phone in London to give him a heads up that they were close. He decided to circle the block again and keep his eye on the man in the camel coat. Heading west on Adams, he turned right on Wabash, driving under the empty elevated tracks. This time when he came round on to Michigan from the other direction, he noticed the Art Institute block was surrounded by fog, yet somehow the other buildings and the street in front were clear. The homeless woman was dumpster-diving at the side of the building, her cart parked on the grass while the man in the camel coat walked through the fog. Sotto cut in front of a bus and pulled the Caddy into its lane to get a closer look at the man’s face. But he had to keep moving, and the bus was tight on his fender. In his rear-view mirror, he could see the driver giving him the finger. When he refocused on the pedestrian, he couldn’t see him.

  He swerved the Caddy out of the bus lane and let the bus pass, then did a tight U-turn and doubled back. Streamers of bluish-green fog fluttered around the building’s façade, engulfing the bronze lions. Sotto blinked and shook his head. Had one of the lions stretched its neck and looked towards him?

  Nah. Getting paranoid.

  Sotto had taken his eyes off the road for only a second, but when he turned back, the homeless woman’s cart was trundling into the street with the woman chasing behind it, mumbling and waving her hands in the air. Sotto slammed on his brakes and swerved to avoid her and her cart. In the instant he pulled the wheel he realized the terrible mistake he’d made. The homeless woman was waving a gun.

  Bang. Bang.

  A long wheeesh, like bullets hitting his car.

  The Caddy jumped the kerb and hit a Free Press newspaper box, folding the flimsy metal beneath its front fender. Across the street beneath the curve of the L, Sotto glimpsed a Chicago police car lighting up and turning on to Michigan Avenue. He scrambled from the front seat. Reaching under the fender, he tried to dislodge the metal box.

  ‘Goddammit,’ he said aloud. Even if he could get it to budge, his two front tyres were flat.

  The CPD car cut across the traffic and into his lane.

  ‘Sir, put your hands where we can see them. And step away from your vehicle.’

  Sotto did what he was asked. Dangerous not to. He stared in disbelief at the Art Institute. The homeless woman was disappearing into the haze hanging over the entire front of the building like a shimmering net. The lions were twitching, their paws lifting off their pedestals as if they were tearing themselves free.

  40.

  MY KIND OF TOWN

  Matt flew out of the Seurat first. Rémy followed seconds later, his long legs splayed on landing, like Bambi ice-skating for the first time. He skidded across the hard floor, just missing the electronic security fields surrounding a small study of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte on the opposite wall.

  Rémy looked back at the painting, which took up a full wall in the gallery. Em was pushing out of the canvas in an explosion of coloured dots, like she was fighting her way through a confetti blizzard.

  Matt held his fingers to his lips. He pointed to the next gallery. Rémy nodded.

  Nice work, sis. We crossed the Atlantic in about fourteen minutes. Can you handle the guard? I’ve got nothing left.

  When the unsuspecting guard turned into the Seurat room, Em stepped in front of him.

  ‘Hello, Bobby,’ she said, scanning his badge. ‘Ever wondered what it feels like to melt?’

  The guard’s eyes blinked rapidly for thirty seconds, his hands twitching, then Em’s inspiriting hit him like a train. He collapsed to the floor in front of her, his eyes still blinking.

  ‘Now what?’ said Rémy.

  ‘She’s not done yet,’ said Matt, leading Rémy to the emergency exit at the rear of the room.

  Clumsily, the guard rolled to his knees and slowly stood up, eyes blinking, as if his conscious brain was fighting to regain control. Em took his hand and hustled him towards the emergency exit where Matt and Rémy were waiting.

  The guard’s radio clicked on. ‘Bobby, check out the Seurat room, will ya? The temps just spiked in there.’

  Em’s eyes opened wide. She held her hands up helplessly. She couldn’t keep control of the guard’s mind and make him talk at the same time.

  Rémy grabbed the guard’s walkie-talkie and spoke into it. ‘Sure thing. On my way there now.’

  Matt grinned. ‘Quick thinking.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Rémy, replacing the radio on Bobby’s belt. ‘A lot of white people think we sound alike anyway.’

  Through Em, Bobby disarmed the alarm, unlocked the door and held it open for the three of them to jump down the two stairs. Staying as close to the walls bordering the building as they could, they darted quickly between lights. With the few drops of inspiriting energy Em had left, she cracked out the camera on the corner of the building before they ran past it.

  ‘Will the guard be OK?’ whispered Rémy to Em.

  ‘He might have a headache, and he may remember us as a wave of colour in his mind—’ Em put her hand on Rémy’s shoulder – ‘but he’ll blame it on his high blood pressure.’

  *

  The lights of Michigan Avenue spread out in front of them. Reaching to the stars, the buildings were packed like a hundred Jenga games into an incredibly small space.

  ‘It’s … it’s so tall,’ said Em in awe.

  Despite the fact that his stomach was doing somersaults, Rémy laughed. ‘I guess it is. It’s sometimes called “the city with the big shoulders”. Come on, I told Sotto to meet us on the next block.’

  The three of them were about to run down the grassy embankment to the pavement when Matt grabbed both their arms and yanked them behind a wall. He pointed to the lions in front of the columned façade of the building.

  ‘They’re glowing,’ said Rémy in surprise.

  ‘That could have been from us when we faded inside,’ said Em.

  ‘It also might mean someone’s watching this building.’

  ‘How would anyone know we were here?’

  The three of them stared at each other. Em’s eyes narrowed and her jaw clenched.

  ‘Caravaggio, the bastard!’ she said. ‘He comes to us for help and then he betrays us … again!’

  ‘Or maybe the nephilim finally caught up with him,’ said Matt.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Rémy. ‘We can’t lurk much longer in the shadows here. We’re already ten minutes late.’

  The traffic was trickling along Michigan Avenue. In an hour it would be streaming above them too, as the first American flight from New York banked in for a landing at Midway Airport.

  ‘I told Sotto to meet us under the L at Wacker Drive,’ Rémy told the others. ‘The elevated trains we have in Chicago.’

  When they turned the corner, a City of Chicago tow truck was cranking the wheels of a 1979 Cadillac up in the air. Before Matt or Em could stop him, Rémy sprinted to the truck.

  ‘Where’s the driver?’ he shouted. ‘What happened?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ snapped the truck driver. ‘I just hook ’em up and get ’em to the pound.’

  Em pulled Rémy back as the truck pulled into the street, with the Caddy scraping the road behi
nd it.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ hissed Matt. ‘We need to do this without calling attention to ourselves.’

  ‘That was Sotto’s car,’ said Rémy. He pulled his arm away and sat down on the stoop of a wine bar.

  Bits of rubber from the front tyres of the car were littering the kerb.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Em.

  ‘Someone definitely knew we were coming,’ Matt said.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ said Rémy. He kicked a strip of rubber with his toe, the edges pulsing in a thin blue light.

  ‘Because,’ said Em, ‘an animated bullet blew out your friend’s tyres.’

  41.

  HOME SWEET HOME

  By the time Matt, Em and Rémy reached the apartment building on foot where Rémy had spent most of his childhood, the sun was rising and traffic was heavy on the main streets. They had decided not to conjure or animate a way to get to the apartment any faster in case they were being watched. Sotto Square’s building sat on a leafy tree-canopied block and housed six flats, most of them inhabited by Sotto’s relatives, employees or families like Rémy’s that Sotto had taken under his wing. Standing on the roof of the building and facing east, it was possible to see a sliver of Lake Michigan between the crumbling smoke-stacks and dilapidated factories that sat abandoned and empty near the shore.

  An iron gate with a security pad and fence bordered the small lawn in front of the well-kept building and the parking lot and a row of garages in back. Before Rémy could punch in the code, the gate swung open. A huge black man stepped out on to the front steps, arms folded, staring at them.

  Rémy half-skipped, half-jogged up the path and threw himself at the man mountain, who picked him off the ground and bear-hugged him.

  ‘Man, I’ve missed you. Sotto said you was comin’ for a visit.’ The big man looked out at the street. ‘Where’s my brother at?’

  ‘Something happened, Two,’ Rémy said. ‘His car was being towed from Wacker and he wasn’t there.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t sound good, does it?’ Two held the outside door for the three of them. ‘Best find out what’s going on.’

  He jogged up the stairs, surprisingly nimble for a man of his size. The others followed. The main room of the flat was comfortably furnished with the biggest suede sectional couch Em had ever seen, facing an equally giant flat screen on the opposite wall. The rooms that had once been a dining room and a bedroom were also one big space, kitted out like an executive’s office with a high-back leather chair sitting behind a mahogany desk that looked museum-worthy.

  ‘So you two must be Rémy’s Irish friends,’ said Two, clapping Matt and Em on the shoulder as they entered the vast space.

  ‘Scottish,’ said Em.

  ‘Same difference, right? You sound Irish to me.’

  Rémy’s expression pleaded mercy from Em. She grinned and shook Two’s hand. Matt did the same.

  Two ushered the three of them into a recently upgraded kitchen.

  ‘This is new,’ Rémy said, running his hands over expensive marble counters. ‘It used to be Sotto’s bedroom.’

  Two looked sidelong at Matt and Em.

  ‘It’s OK, Two. They know what happened to my mom.’

  ‘Good. That’s good,’ said Two. ‘Helps you get past it if you share your hurt with someone. Am I right?’ he said, smiling at Em.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Em, feeling a ribbon of well-meaning concern curling from Two’s mind to hers.

  I like this guy.

  ‘So your mom’s flat was busted up pretty bad after you both were attacked on the balcony,’ Two began. ‘Sotto had us mirror similar damage down here so it looked like her balcony had crashed and pulled down the entire wall and it didn’t look like your balcony got singled out. Cops bought it.’

  ‘And my … mom?’

  ‘We took care of her and your Tía Rosa. They’re in a right nice place on Beecher. Got a tree above them and all. I can take you there, if you’d like.’

  Em saw Rémy fighting back tears. She slipped her fingers into his.

  ‘Some other time,’ Rémy managed. ‘Right now I really need to get back into the apartment. I’d like to get some of my mom’s things.’

  ‘Sure. Sure.’

  Two’s mobile phone started vibrating in his pocket. Matt poured himself a glass of water and stared out across the balcony at the petrol station on the corner. Em followed his gaze. A flash of blue light flickered near the gas pumps. Matt shoved his shades up on to his hair and splashed water on his face.

  Two handed him a towel. ‘That was Sotto. He’s on his way. Said not to leave the flat. Under any circumstances.’

  Em was afraid of what the blue light might mean. Not leaving the flat was fine by her.

  ‘I’ll fix yous some breakfast.’ Two opened a cupboard and took out a variety of bowls, and then went to the skyscraper-like refrigerator and stared inside. ‘How ’bout Eggs Benedict?’

  I love this guy.

  42.

  OVER EASY

  Em and Rémy sat across from each other at a marble kitchen island big enough to land a small plane, finishing their breakfast. Two Square had left to pick up Sotto, and Matt was staring out at the petrol station again.

  ‘Something’s not right over there,’ he said. ‘Before breakfast I thought I saw something. Figured I was just hungry.’ He shoved his shades up into his hair. ‘Now I think it was an animation.’

  ‘I saw it too,’ said Em. ‘Your eyes were pink just now, by the way.’

  ‘Then we should go up to my apartment and get the painting right away, just in case we have to leave in a hurry,’ said Rémy.

  ‘You two go up to the apartment. I’ll go down.’ Matt looked at Rémy. ‘How many entrances in this building?’

  ‘One at the front and … wait, give me a second.’ He took out his harmonica and played the opening chords to Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’. ‘Make that just one at the front. The other one just disappeared.’

  ‘You’re getting pretty comfortable doing that,’ Em observed.

  ‘I’m gettin’ pretty comfortable doing a lot of things since I met you two.’

  Matt left the others on the landing and headed down the two flights to the front door, where he hid in the shadows beneath the stairs. His eyes fluttered until fragments of blue and green gilded his irises, making it possible for him to see through the front doors to the outlines of vehicles and pedestrians passing in front of the building. And he waited.

  *

  Rémy stopped dead in the hallway outside his old apartment. Em crashed into his heels. A wall of sound had hit him hard, a cacophony of high-pitched screams and banging drums with a million insects droning a bass line.

  ‘If you want, I can fetch the painting on my own,’ Em offered.

  Rémy shook his head. ‘I need to do this,’ he said.

  Using the key Two Square had given him, he pushed open the door to the apartment and moved quickly through to the kitchen.

  The barrage of sound in the hallway had been bad enough, but inside it was much worse. Rémy heard the whole of his childhood playing out right where he stood. From the day he and his mom had arrived in Chicago with two suitcases and a Teen Titans lunchbox to the day he fled the city with his guitar case, a backpack and a key, music flooded his mind: classical to blues, R&B to rock to rap. Cello, violins, guitar, harmonica and beats sampling Bach, BB King, Dylan, Drake, Common and Kendrick Lamar. He collapsed into the plastic kitchen chair at the Formica table, his eyes watering, his chest tight, a thorn piercing his heart.

  Standing by the kitchen door, Em felt helpless and overwhelmingly sad. She tasted pancakes and syrup, strawberries, bourbon, and chocolate ice cream. She sensed hurt and disappointment and love and pride, and something else lingering in the rooms.

  Evil.

  43.

  WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

  ‘You must be Matt,’ said Sotto, stepping into the apartment block ahead of his younger
brother who, Matt observed, was at least twice Sotto’s size. Suddenly Two Square’s name made sense.

  Matt extended his hand, grazing Sotto’s knuckles in greeting. ‘There’s something freaky out there so I came to check it out. We were worried that—’

  ‘Not here.’

  Sotto took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Go on up with him,’ said Two Square, settling himself by the doors. ‘I’ll keep watch.’

  Matt and Sotto were in the living room of the second-floor apartment before Sotto spoke again.

  ‘Listen,’ said Sotto. ‘I’ve known for years that somethin’ was different with Rém and his mom. I mean “change the world and maybe die for it” different. But it wasn’t until the day Annie was murdered I knew it was fuckin’ Ghostbusters different.’

  ‘That’s one way to put it,’ said Matt, sitting on the edge of the massive sectional, his back to the wide windows. ‘How much do you know about Rémy’s particular skill set?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Matt tried to explain Rémy’s powers, how he created magic with his music.

  ‘A Conjuror, you say? Like now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t Copperfield shit? And you and your sister are the same?’ said Sotto, peeling his T-shirt off as he headed down the hall towards a bathroom bursting with morning sunlight. He was both ripped and illustrated, tattoos covering his back.

  ‘No,’ said Matt, rubbing sleep from his eyes. It seemed days ago that they’d confronted the Pied Piper in Scotland, instead of only hours. ‘Rémy’s line is more like change-reality-with-music, Luke Cage-meets-Tempest kind of shit.’