A Mage's Gambit: New York Falling (A Malachi English book)

by Andy Hyland

  I’d been wondering that myself. Simeon was our rock, our ever-present help in times of trouble. But what we knew about him wouldn’t fill a side of notepaper, let alone one of the books in his ever-increasing library. We didn’t discuss the whole Vampire thing. Everyone figured it out quickly, but it seemed impolite to raise it before he did. And he never, ever did. Well, not with me, and I’d known him for ten years now. Becky? Maybe. I’d have to ask her.

  As to who he talked to, who his shadowy contacts were, why he kept all the books, writing many of his own as well as collecting rare breeds from underworld vendors – I had no idea. All I knew for sure was that whatever a Vampire was, whatever it did to him and whatever it took from him, he was still human. I mean, not human in the normal sense, but he hadn’t crossed over and turned demonic on us. My evidence for this was two-fold. Firstly, he didn’t seem to impact electronic stuff in the same way that a demonic presence would. I hadn’t managed to persuade him to watch the Indiana Jones films with me, despite several attempts, but it was still theoretically possible. And secondly, he hadn’t, to my knowledge, ever tried to double-cross, maim, or kill any of us. A demon would have done at least some of that within an hour of meeting you, as a point of principle.

  ‘Who knows,’ said Zack, interrupting my thoughts. ‘I’ve never found out that much about him.’

  ‘Figured as much. I keep hoping somebody will. Curiosity, you know?’

  ‘Oh I know. You got enough cash for a cab?’ He patted his pockets and gave me an apologetic grin. I gave him three hundred. His guy down at the docks wasn’t in the habit of handing out freebies. You do that in the world we live in, and you starve very quickly. It’s not personal, but we have to live. Anyway, I figured I owed Zack much more than that for tonight’s work. I’d see him right.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s me sorted for tonight. What you up to?’

  Me? I had no idea. I simply put one foot in front of the other and kept walking.

  Chapter seven

  The Outworld Emporium was on Fifth Avenue, down near St Patricks. The rent was more than any shop like that should have been able to pay, but there was a copious amount of help with that, from family sources. An hour down from my apartment I guessed where my legs were leading me, and I didn’t stop them. I wouldn’t go in, I told myself. Not in the state I was in. But it would be nice to see her. To watch from a distance. Wow. That makes me sound like a stalker.

  The lights from the place shone out like a beacon to the lost, the needy and the nocturnally restless nerds wandering the streets. Although she did get really angry that one time I used the word ‘nerd’ in front of her. Strangely, she’s okay with ‘geek.’ Whatever. I don’t pretend to understand these things. In any case, the Outworld Emporium contained the largest selection of comics, vintage comics, fantasy DVDs and fan merchandise on the island. Pretty damn impressive for an outfit run single-handed by a girl who, when she arrived in town a few months ago, had never been to a comic shop before. Having known her a few short weeks, I was no longer surprised she’d been able to pull it off.

  It wasn’t that busy inside at the moment. She stayed open till midnight on weekdays, and things would grow gradually busier as the evening progressed. I couldn’t see her behind the till – one of her employees was handing that at the moment. She was probably down in the basement, handling the stock or checking out a new delivery.

  ‘Hey You!’

  Or, she was behind me, heading back from grabbing one of the coffees she liked. The one with the long description that I still couldn’t remember. I turned and she was standing there, grinning in that slightly goofy way that I found charming and incredibly sexy at the same time. She was twenty-three, a couple of years younger than me, and monstrously intelligent, but she’d never lost her innocence and vitality. She’d never become jaded. And that was what I loved most about her. Bugger. Memo to self: stop using the word ‘love’. Way too soon for that. The sight of her there, in jeans and a Bon Jovi T-shirt, with her blonde hair in bunches, was enough to banish for a few glorious moments everything else that day had thrown at me.

  ‘Hey, Julie. How’s it going?’

  ‘Great. How did your day go? Sorry I couldn’t make it, but, you know. Shop needs sorting and all that.’

  Took me a few seconds to figure out that she was talking about my Empire State visit. I’d explained to her why I went, and she got it. Completely got it. ‘Good, thanks,’ I said, lying for the sake of simplicity. ‘Got called away for work, though. Kind of spoilt it a bit.’ I fished the souvenir I’d got her from the gift shop out my pocket – the mini Empire State building on a chain. ‘Here. Got you this. To whet your appetite for next time.’

  She acted like I’d tossed her a necklace from Tiffany’s. ‘This is amazing! Thank you, you are so great! Come on, I’ve got something for you as well.’

  I let her drag me in, past the shelves rammed with stock, past the customers and the guy at the till whom I vaguely recognized but couldn’t remember the name of. ‘Came in today,’ she muttered, kicking boxes until she found one that wasn’t empty. ‘Here it is. I didn’t put in on the shelf in case you wanted it.’

  She pulled out the clown figure from Spawn, grimacing as she gave it another look. ‘This is the stuff you like, right?’

  I took it with a grin. ‘Good guy comes back from the dead and kicks the crap out of demons. Spawn gets me every time. Thanks. How much do I owe you?’

  ‘I told you, you don’t have to pay. I can give you a present every now and then can’t I? Least I can do for my b…well, you know.’

  So she was close to slipping as well. Took everything I had to stop a grin as goofy as hers leaping onto my face. Then reality kicked back in. It always does. Was I prepared to take this girl and drag her into my world where her innocence and beauty and sweet nature wouldn’t protect her, even for a second? I knew I couldn’t, even as another part of me fought back. Maybe I could have a double life. A disguise. A secret identity. Maybe my reality, for once, didn’t have to get in the way.

  ‘Hey, Malachi, was that you I saw head back there with a gorgeous young lady?’

  No, it turned out my reality wasn’t going to give me a break for five minutes, let alone time to love, grow old and raise a small family.

  ‘Is that one of your friends?’ Julie asked, eyes wide open. She ran back out front to the till. I followed her to find Becky standing there, beaten up but still looking far better than she had any right to. Whatever she kept stored away in the hidden recesses at her place, it was potent stuff.

  ‘Hey Malachi.’

  ‘Hi Becky. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Me? Oh I was out doing stuff. And I saw you and came in to say hi.’

  ‘Really?’ I didn’t even try to keep the scepticism out of my voice.

  ‘Ahem,’ said Julie.

  ‘Sorry. Julie, this is Becky.’

  ‘Becky O’Taitley,’ said Becky, holding out her hand. ‘Good to meet you. Finally.’

  ‘Julie Fairchild. Great to meet you Becky. So he’s been talking about me?’

  ‘Talking about you? Sometimes I have to punch him to get him to shut up.’

  A rosy tint crept onto Julie’s cheeks. Was she blushing? ‘I wish I could say the same. Getting anything out of Mal is like getting blood out of a stone.’

  ‘Yeah, Mal can be like that, can’t he?’ Oh, she was loving this. ‘Tell you what, now we’ve finally met, why don’t we go out for dinner? Or a quick bite, if you’re already eaten. Or just a drink.’

  ‘Well, Julie’s got to work,’ I said. The temperature seemed to dip slightly. I looked from one of them to the other. Julie looked disappointed. Becky was raising her eyebrows in an are-you-really-that-stupid kind of way.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ Julie said, too brightly. ‘We’re probably going to get swamped any minute. And yep, here they are.’

  A small mob of nerds – sorry, geeks - appeared at the door, back from a film by the way they were t
alking. They spread out, taking over the place within seconds.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Julie. ‘I would have liked that drink. Really.’

  ‘Me too, hon. Look, if it’s okay with you, can I borrow Mal? My place got burgled, and I got a bit beaten up. Hence, you know, the plasters and stuff.’

  ‘No way! I’m so sorry. Did the cops get them?’

  ‘Not yet, but it’s early days. Anyway, Mal kindly offered to help me get my place back looking shipshape. I need someone for the heavy lifting. Is that okay? Unless you’re doing anything after…’

  ‘No, you take him. If there’s anything I can do to help, you let me know. Please. I’d love to.’

  ‘And I appreciate that. Thank you. Come on Mal, let’s get cracking.’

  I gave Julie a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thanks for the clown. I’ll put it up somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe I can come round and see it when it’s up?’

  ‘Sure. I’d like that. I’ll call you soon.’

  As we headed to the door, Becky ducked back and said something quietly to Julie. They both laughed.

  ‘What was that about?’ I demanded as soon as we’d gone out of sight of the shop.

  ‘I told her I’d beat some sense into you if it killed me. Boy, you are absolutely clueless, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t remember seeing you with a string of dates on your arm, out every night.’

  ‘That, Malachi, is out of choice, whereas with you it’s clearly out of ineptitude. Oh, is it okay to call you Malachi, or do you prefer Mal?’

  ‘Stop it. Just stop it. So why were you following me?’

  ‘Oh I wasn’t following you. I was following her. Nothing sinister, just curious. She’s nice. I like her. You should marry her. Quick. Before she realizes that she could do so much better.’

  ‘There are so many things wrong with what you just said that I don’t know where to start. But even if you followed her, it was me you dragged out of there. Any reason?’

  ‘Hey, in an ideal world all three of us would be going out for a drink or a meal. Normal stuff. Don’t worry. Maybe you’ll get the hang of it, eventually. But failing that, I got you out to check on you. Hell of a day, and we can’t exactly discuss it in front of little miss sunshine. Who is, can I say for the record, so much better for you than Melanie. Are we clear on that?’

  ‘Crystal. I’m not disagreeing.’

  ‘And you are…?’

  ‘Crap. Really crap. Momentarily better, but overall, crap. Really crap day.’

  ‘No, don’t hold it back. Let it spill.’

  ‘Two people needed me today. One got abducted. The other one got killed. No, not killed – slaughtered. Because of the choices I made. Any one of a dozen decisions I’ve made today could have been different. And that could have saved them. Saved Jerry, anyway.’

  ‘The world’s a bad place. Stuff happens. Everyday.’

  ‘I don’t care about the world. The world can go burn for al l care. But we should be able to take care of our own. I should be able to.’

  ‘To which I’d say, firstly, you did nothing wrong. You know that, but you won’t admit it to yourself. And secondly, as you also know, the only way we’re going to help Melanie and get some payback for Jerry is to get to the bottom of what’s going on here.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Nor am I. But we didn’t start this. And anything this bad needs looking into.’

  ‘Simeon’s dealing with it,’ I said.

  ‘That doesn’t mean we get to duck out. We’ve been attacked. We will take whatever measures we think need taking. Us.’

  ‘Last time I checked, Simeon was one of us.’ She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Okay, then he isn’t,’ I conceded. ‘But he’s with us, and I’ve been ordered to take some down time. Anyway, I don’t buy all this. We’re not out here wandering around because of me and my little problems. What gives?’

  ‘Fine, you got me. Stop here. Now look around. Really look around, because boy, you are not functioning at the moment. What do you see?’

  On the surface: cars blasting by; people – businessmen and women hurrying home, coats drawn tight against the chill air; lovers holding hands, off to who-knows-where; friends chatting in groups. Normal New York evening life. But that’s not what Becky was getting at. I let myself relax, settled my breathing, and softened my focus. Slipped between the layers of things, gliding beneath the ordinary and above the mundane. And…there. The two lovers across the street: shamblers, bug hunches on their backs, ridden well - not as jerky or obvious in the artificial light of the streetlamps. But there was something else. Something not quite right.

  Then I saw it. Them. Solitary figures, heads down, stepping quickly between the other pedestrians, all headed north. Three, five, no – six of them in total. They didn’t linger long enough to cause major damage, but every light, every advertising screen they slipped past, flickered and fuzzed, reverting to normal once they were past.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked me. ‘Up for it?’

  Chapter eight

  I nodded to Becky and we headed north, quickly but discreetly, as intent on avoiding a potential tail ourselves as we were on tailing the demons. That was easier said than done. They were fleet-footed and adept at judging gaps in the increasingly crowded sidewalks to squeeze through. Added to that, the two of us weren’t In the best of shape for this sort of thing. Becky, despite all the bravado, was still hurting badly – that much became clear as we progressed. As for me, the body wasn’t too bad, but I was fighting the gaping emptiness that comes from stretching yourself too much on a casting. Soul-ache, for want of a better term. Before too long it was all we could do to keep up.

  ‘There’s more,’ Becky wheezed as we came to the corner of 54th Street.

  ‘Yep,’ I confirmed, ‘I’ve seen eleven now.’

  ‘Slacker. I’ve seen twelve.’

  Throw anything you want at Becky, but she’ll still come out the other side ridiculously competitive. Fortunately our quarry had slowed and turned left onto 54th. Now they were more careful, glancing behind them, making us drop back. Halfway along the demons turned into a large glass doorway. The sign above announced the Staffarian hotel. It looked like one of those places that had its heyday in the sixties and seventies, and was now crumbling into decayed splendor. There are a few of these relics still about, but not many. The land grabs and redevelopments of the last few decades have all but done for them now.

  ‘Do we follow?’ I asked. It was a fair question. We could always come back and scout the place out later. Even if they were minor entities, they were way past our ability to deal with if they were gathering in those sorts of numbers.

  ‘Got to admit it, I’m tempted,’ said Becky. I should have pushed then. Not let it gone any further. If Becky’s ever tempted to back out of something, then it’s wise to do the same.

  ‘Let’s stick our head round the corner,’ I suggested. ‘We should be able to get an idea of what’s going on, and still have time to leg it if we need to. Once we’re out on the street they’re limited in what they can do about us.’

  There was one thing on which the Aware and the hellkind were agreed: that the human race didn’t need to know what was going on. Us, because for all their faults, we were technically on the same side, despite how annoying they got. Your basic family situation, I suppose. Or so I’m told. The hellkind, or the lesser ones anyway, because human awareness would limit a great deal of their power or influence. They thrived on misery and secrecy and fear and regret and terror. All of which, by their reckoning, were best achieved under cover of mystery and darkness. They were also, by virtue of a quirk in the way the Fades worked, much less powerful here than on the other side. I hadn’t seen a demon face off against a rocket launcher yet, but I wouldn’t fancy their chances.

  This agreement on both sides, by the way, gave rise to my particular brand of cleaning job. I take money from wherever it’s coming from, and I make the mess go away.
And so the truce continues. Anyway, they were unlikely to tear us limb from limb or cast flaming orbs of fire at us while we legged it down Broadway. Not that things couldn’t get out of control sometimes. Remember the whole alligators in the sewers legend? I can confirm that there are no ‘gators down there. They wouldn’t stand a chance.

  We hung around for five minutes. No more demons had come into the street, and all the ones that were here had gone inside the Staffarian. As casually as possible we strolled up and walked through the revolving glass door.

  Plush red carpet ran from wall to wall in the spacious reception area, although the thread worn patches and cigarette burns tarnished the effect somewhat. A grand staircase rose up the centre to a mezzanine floor. The place looked deserted apart from a tall guy in a dated uniform, heading towards us with a fixed and apologetic smile on his face. I stretched out to him. No indication that he was anything other than a regular guy. That made life easier.

  He didn’t even reach us before he was trying to usher us out of the building, waving his hands in a shooing motion, like he could get us to back off by creating a stiff breeze. ‘I’m sorry, we’re completely closed for a private function tonight. Terribly inconvenient for you, I know, but if you turn right out of here and head downtown, there’s the Valiant, which I know has vacancies, and may I say the food -’

  ‘That’s okay, honey,’ Becky said gently. ‘We’re with the function tonight. The only one that’s around, right? The one that’s cleared out the whole place? We’re with that.’

  The guy – Chet, according to his name tag – glanced nervously around the lobby. ‘I don’t think that’s correct, madam,’ he almost whispered. ‘I have been…informed that everyone for that function is here and that under no circumstances should anyone else be admitted.’

  A bead of sweat rolled down his head, and I felt an overwhelming wave of sympathy for Chet. Here he was, doing his job as best he can, when suddenly these thugs burst in, these thugs that unnerve him right to the bone in a way he doesn’t understand. They make outrageous threats again his person and his family. They know things about him. And if he disobeys even in the slightest, he knows with a deep certainty that all those threats will come to pass. As you may have guessed, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen.