I nodded, and he moved on to the others. A little improvised talisman. The kind of thing we’d played at in school, writing the name of the boy we wanted to like us in the form of a cross so that God would notice it. We were storming Normandy Beach with BB guns and bottle rockets. We were doomed. I took the little cantrip and tucked it into the band of my jeans where my belt would keep it pressed against me. The others were doing things that were very much the same. Except for Oonishi.
“I’m not going out there,” he said. “I don’t know anything about this crap. I meant what I said. I’m staying here.”
Rage boiled up in me, raw and vicious and ready to kill out of hand. He had brought us here. All of it was his fault as much as anyone’s. And now he wanted to step back from it and let everyone else suffer while he stayed safe. Well, screw that. We could tie him up, carry him down, and put him in the coffin. It would serve the bastard right and save Chogyi Jake besides. Aubrey pretended to cough. Oonishi looked at him, and then at me, and then flinched back.
Yes, I thought. I could do that. I could kill him. I could kill an innocent man because he was too much a coward to face down a rider. I wondered if that was what Eric would have done.
“Leave him,” I said. The contempt in my voice could have stripped paint. “Let’s go.”
Walking back into Grace felt like stepping into a septic tank. The air didn’t have a smell to it besides the usual industrial freshener and the hint of rain still falling in some other world, but it felt filthy. The lights were dim and unsteady. Something huge rumbled far above us. Thunder or a collapsing girder. Or the rider’s unreal fists beating at the physical walls of its prison. Its presence lay over us, pressing down. Smothering. I dreaded the moment it turned its attention toward me.
“Keep to the middle of the building,” Ex said. “It’s the part that should have changed the least. If we can get underground, it may not have changed much at all. No reason to switch the physical configuration if there’s not a physical exit, right?”
“Fine,” I said. I wanted him to quit talking. I wanted it all over, quick before I could think about it too much.
We fell into a pattern; I scouted ahead, Ex following close, Aubrey and Kim behind him, then Chogyi Jake as rear guard. We turned a corner into a wide hallway. A gurney lay on top of an IV drip stand. A widening pool of blood and fluid meant that someone had been in it before it fell. A dark-skinned woman in a doctor’s white lab coat and a thick-shouldered man with a gray-blond crew cut stepped out of a doorway, watching us all pass. Their eyes were wide and uncomprehending, but they didn’t glow.
“It’s all right,” I told them. “We’re taking care of it.”
“What is this?” the doctor asked, tears in her voice if not her eyes. She had a beautiful accent. Indian, maybe.
“It’s the devil,” I said. “But we’re taking care of it.”
At the end of the hall, Ex stopped at a set of metal doors with a thin window in the side like something from a high school or low-security prison. A black plastic card reader was set into the wall level with the doorknob, glowering out with a single baleful red light. I could see a narrow stairway through the glass.
“Okay,” Ex said. “If I’m right, this will get us down to the first subbasement. We’ll need to go back toward the east to get down past that.”
His explanations were starting to annoy me, and I almost said so when my cell went off, Uncle Eric telling me from my pack that I had a call. Apparently the binding in the fifties hadn’t taken blocking cell traffic into account. I scrabbled for it. I knew the incoming number.
“What?” I said.
“Jayné?” David Souder said. His voice was shaking. “I’m in trouble. I think I’m in real trouble.”
“Where are you?”
“The hospital,” he said. “Grace Memorial. I was an idiot. I didn’t listen to you. I went back, and I thought I was saving Grandpa Del, but the thing that came out of that box . . . it was evil. I don’t even know what it was. I ran. I just ran. I didn’t even remember that I had a phone on me until just now. I usually leave it at work, and—”
“The hospital’s all changed shape,” I said. I sounded bored and put-upon. I sounded bitchy. I didn’t care. “You’re trapped. You can’t get out.”
“And it’s free,” David said. “I can still feel it a little. It’s so angry.”
“Just stay where you are,” I said. “I’m in the hospital too. We’re going down to put the rider back where it belongs.”
“You’re here?”
“I’m here,” I said.
“Where?” he said. “I think I’m on the fifth floor. Maybe the third. I don’t know. But I can get to you. I can—”
“Stay where you are! Do you understand me? Don’t move. Go find a chair and just sit in it!” I was shouting now. Screaming into the phone. I was losing it. I didn’t care about that either.
The line was silent for three or four seconds. When David spoke again, he sounded like he’d stepped back a few feet.
“Right,” he said. “Got it.”
I dropped the connection and stuffed my phone back into the pack. The others were looking at me. Ex and Aubrey seemed shocked. Chogyi Jake, sympathetic. Kim turned away and wouldn’t meet my eyes. An inhumanly high-pitched scream came from somewhere behind us, like a bat being pressed to death, then stopped with a loud, electrical pop.
“We waiting for something?” I asked.
Kim swiped her card through the reader. The red glow turned green. We headed underground. Our footsteps echoed in the stairwell, and no one spoke. Each small, cramped flight brought us closer to the fallout shelter and the civil defense ward, and I walked down the steps like I was in a bad dream. I didn’t want to go, but I was going. I’d always thought of horror as the thing from the movies, the scary monster that jumps out from dark corners. I’d been wrong. Horror is doing something terrible because you have to. Killing your best friend, for instance. I kept walking, kept pressing myself forward. If I stopped, I didn’t think I’d be able to start again. I couldn’t stand to look back at Chogyi Jake—his graceful walk, the smile that always waited just at the edge of his mouth, the glitter of joy and amusement in his eyes. Even now, they were there. Muted, maybe. Dimmed. The idea that I would lose him here, tonight, was literally inconceivable; my mind kept skittering off it, defeated. He was so alive, so sure of himself. We’d go home after this, back to the condo, and he’d make green tea, the way he always had. He’d gently call me on my bullshit. I couldn’t imagine any other outcome.
Breaking up with Aubrey had been easy compared to this. It had been right. I’d been prepared, sure of myself, and in control. And anyway, he was just going back to his ex-wife. I was letting Aubrey go. He wasn’t dying.
I was going to kill Chogyi Jake.
Or maybe it wouldn’t work; maybe we’d get lucky and the coffin would have been blown to slivers. Maybe the ground itself would refuse to take the rider again. Chogyi Jake would be spared, and then . . .
And then.
When we reached the end of the last flight, I looked out the door. I’d expected it to be like places we’d been before, all storage and ducts and laundry services, but the subbasement looked a lot like the upper floors. Hallways twisted in nearly organic curves, the walls studded with signs directing us to Medical Records, Nuclear Medicine, Oncology, Pathology, or Facilities Management. The closed doors wore warnings against radiation and biohazards and intrusion by unauthorized personnel, along with the occasional taped-up Dilbert cartoon. Everything told us where we should go and where not to, the architecture itself pushing us like cattle in a slaughterhouse run. Just by looking, I couldn’t tell if the magic affecting the rest of the building had warped the nature of the spaces here, or if they’d always been like this.
“We should be okay,” Kim said. “There aren’t any patient care units down here. They try to keep the beds up where there’s some sunlight.”
I nodded. Ex set off down one corrid
or as if he knew where he was going. I followed. I didn’t notice particularly that Chogyi Jake had come to walk at my side. I didn’t know how he could radiate calm, but he did. I looked over at him, then away. I heard him take in a long, slow breath and then let it out. In anyone else, it would have been a sigh. From him, it was just an invitation to breathe with him. I found myself walking in step, our feet swinging in the same arcs, our arms shifting like we were twins. And some part of the peace he carried with him began to seep through my anguish and despair. I wanted to reach out, put my arm around him, rest my head on his shoulder, and beg him not to do this thing. I didn’t. I just tried to enjoy the walking.
I was so involved in myself, I didn’t see the trap until we were in it.
The waiting area outside Nuclear Medicine looked like it had been lifted out of an airport. Rows of plastic-upholstered seats joined together at the hips stared at a dead television screen. An intake desk lurked behind a set of vertical security bars, rolled down for the night like it was a street-front shop in the bad part of town. Everything smelled like carpet shampoo. Just beyond, a set of double doors in fake blond wood paneling warned that people with pacemakers should remain outside. Ex was walking in the front of the group, and so he was the first to stop when the door swung open.
Five men came out toward us. Two wore the scrubs and lanyard ID cards of nurses, two had the cop-reminiscent uniforms of security guards, and one—a huge man with full-body tattoos, a shaved head, and easily a dozen stitches in his scalp—was in the breezy gown of a patient. Their eyes glowed cold blue-white, their clothing and hair floated. In the waiting room, the television stuttered and came on, the images a sickening montage that I’d seen before. Slaughter and brutality and the joy of the killing mob. The walls had changed. Instead of the carefully soothing paint and bright posters, they were bare concrete, stained by water and blood and time.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” all five men asked at once. “Did you think you could hide? I’ve got you in my guts.”
I looked back over my shoulder. If we could run . . . Six other people—four men and two women—were behind us. Their eyes glowed too. One of the security guards drew his pistol.
“You are in one flesh, slave girl. I have come to take it from you and eat what comes out: you and her and all the others you travel with.” The voice was a chorus, but among the various voices, there was something else. Something more. The sweet, silky voice of the man from my dream with his hat and his old-fashioned suit. His voice grew out of all the others put together, and the effect made my skin crawl.
The little pocket of paper against my skin flared painfully, and I saw the others—Chogyi Jake, Ex, Aubrey, Kim—flinch at the same moment I did. The glowing-eyed mob grunted in frustration, and the guard raised his gun. Years of action flicks had trained me to expect a deep, authoritative boom, but the report was small and dry as a firecracker. I heard the bullet hiss past me, but I was already in motion, my body sprinting forward with a scream that tore the air. The other guard drew his own gun, and the three unarmed men moved toward me like blockers on a football field. Someone behind me screamed, but I couldn’t look back. Another pistol report came, and I rolled my weight, twisting my body and pushing my fist and qi together into one of the nurses’ chests. I felt his ribs give way, but the other two were on me, their weight dragging me down.
The last time, when the rider had still been trapped, the mob had been made from men and women. Rage-crazed, yes, but only normal people. Now I felt the power of the rider surging through the hands of its tools, burning cold and implacable as hate. I was on my knees, arms twisted back and locked. If I tried to rise up, my elbows would break. Behind me, Kim screamed, and Chogyi Jake moaned. The two security guards stepped close, the paired pistols aiming at my head. I pressed out my qi in a scream. I might as well have kept silent.
Something loud happened, and for half a second I thought they’d shot me. The guard standing to my left crumpled, black blood spilling down his legs, and his eyes flickering white to blue to black. The guard standing to my right whirled just as the explosion came again. He went down in a heap. A new voice rang out in the hallway, familiar and unexpected and obvious.
“I’ve got enough ammunition to take down every one you put up, y’bastard!” David Souder yelled. “I don’t want to, but push me and you know I will.” He racked another round in his shotgun and stepped forward. Resting the barrel on the shoulder of the shaved-headed patient who had my right arm in a lock.
“You let them go or I will,” he said.
The room was silent. David’s eyes were bright and glassy and brimming with a fear that I recognized. He didn’t know whether he was bluffing either. I took two deep, fast breaths, gathering my will into a ball of invisible power, and pressed it out through my right hand. I could feel the rider inside the patient’s flesh, a cold pressure pushing back at me.
“Kill them, then,” the mob said at once, and each of them smiled. David’s face went pale.
“Let go,” I said, and the man holding me shuddered. The eerie glow went out of his eyes and he dropped my hand, stumbling back.
“What the hell, man,” he said, his hands out toward David’s shotgun as if his fingers would stop the round. “What the hell?”
I felt a short rush of pleasure. I could still break the rider’s hold on these people the way I had with Kim that first time. I could take back what it had stolen. It wasn’t strong enough to keep them. Not yet.
The television screamed in frustration, then popped, scattering sparks like a firework. The pressure on my other arm faltered, and I pulled myself free. Three men lay at my feet. The two security guards; one bleeding badly from the side, the other curled up in a fetal ball in a spreading pool of blood. The nurse I’d punched was fighting hard to draw breath, a white foam at the corner of his mouth. Their eyes were human. Their pain was human. When I looked back over my shoulder, the glow had gone from the back rank of the mob too. And the walls were painted again. The rider’s influence had been withdrawn. Kim had blood on her mouth. Chogyi Jake was on his hands and knees, standing up slowly. The woman who’d been kicking him stepped forward to help him up.
“We need to get these three to the ER,” I said. “Ex, can you—”
“Jayné,” Aubrey said. “We have to go.”
I pointed to the fallen security guards.
“They’ve been shotgunned,” I yelled. “They could die!”
“They could,” Ex said, coming toward me. “But we have someplace we need to be, and the rider’s getting reinforcements.”
I looked around, a sense of powerlessness washing through me. Chogyi Jake looked stunned, Ex grim. Aubrey and Kim stood with their backs together, unconsciously preparing for another wave of attacks. I turned to the shaved-headed man, pointing a finger at his chest.
“You,” I said. “Get them help. You understand? You get them help, or I will track you down and finish the job!”
“Yeah, all right, lady,” the man said. He had a low growl of a voice, a bear that had been punched in the throat too many times. “Whatever you say.”
I turned to David.
“You just can’t follow simple directions, can you?” I said.
“Apparently not,” he said. His voice was shaky, his face pale. Chances were good he’d just killed two men. The first time I’d seen anyone killed, I couldn’t stop vomiting. He was holding together better than that, at least.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Come with us.”
I couldn’t fight the rider if every swing I took hurt someone innocent. I couldn’t stand against the Beast Rahab without becoming a little bit like it. The good guys were the ones who protected the innocent, who stood on principle, who thought that failing in a just cause was better than championing a moral compromise. And it turned out that wasn’t me.
I was the lesser evil.
TWENTY-TWO
One of the first cantrips I’d learned was how to bring my qi up to my eyes
, brushing aside all illusion and sharpening my sight. My head ached from it now. The hospital around us seethed with malice. We had navigated the second subbasement without another encounter with the rider’s victims, but at the cost of moving slowly through longer, harder routes. Ex had brought us to dead ends twice now, forcing us back along our path. The frustration of being lost in the maze made me want to scream. The fear that another ambush might be around the next corner. I’d given my paper talisman to David on the theory that the wards and protections Eric had put on me would give me some cover, and I didn’t want the guy with the shotgun getting all glowy around the eyelids.
I wasn’t the only nervous one.
“But how did you find us?” Ex said.
“I don’t know,” David said. “I mean, I knew you were going back to the place. With the coffin. I just started going there too, and then . . .”
“There are choke points,” Aubrey said. “Any complex route is going to have places where the number of possible paths narrows down and places where it opens up again. The rider knew that too.”
“The rider headed us off at the pass?” Ex said.
“It could be at all the passes,” Kim said. “All of them at once. And the chances are always pretty good of running into someone when you’re going to the same place.”
Only Chogyi Jake didn’t talk. Since the fight, his face had grayed, and he kept a hand pressed to his belly. I knew he was hurt and hurting. That I couldn’t do anything about it only added to my frustration.
“But if there’s a connection,” Ex said. “If David and the rider are still in communication somehow—”
“Then every hallway between us and that coffin would be standing-room only with people trying to kill us,” I said. “They aren’t, so they aren’t. Let it go.”
It took almost an hour, scuttling like rats, darting from shadow to shadow, to reach the thick steel doors with the faded trefoil on them. Fallout Shelter. The remnant of the good old days when the Russians were going to drop nukes on us at any moment and the worst thing you could be was a commie. It wasn’t even my parents’ generation. These were my grandparents’ nightmares in fossil form, concrete and steel to keep what happened in Nagasaki and Hiroshima from happening here, built less than a decade after Truman had given the go-ahead to drop the bombs. The lock had been forced, and the air within smelled like burned cheese.
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