Shadows of New York

by Heather Fraser Brainerd

  “Okay, here we go, final level,” said Nick, who was starting to look tired. The bottle of “сахарный взрыв кофеина!!!” was empty, the candy had been reduced to empty wrappers, and the brightening sky hinted that the sun would be rising soon.

  In the game, it was pitch dark. The street was lit only by dim streetlamps when Jimmy and Kevin stepped from the subway exit and stood before the Empire State Building. In front of the building, as if daring them to enter, was the wraith. He slid through the crack between two doors and disappeared from view. The van Helsings, taking the dare, ran after him.

  It was a floor-by-floor battle through every type of monster they had fought so far. Luckily, the game was scaled down and they didn’t really have to fight their way up all 102 stories. Being so close to the end, Aiden didn’t seem too bothered when they encountered the werewolves. He continued to sit on the edge of his seat, leaning forward, watching everything. On their last trip to Pappy’s, they had unlocked the use of the metal fangs. Josh wasted no time trying these out on a poor goblin, and he had to admit that the graphics of that particular attack were cool. After twenty stories or so (Josh lost count after eight), they emerged onto the roof. Like the real sky outside, Jimmy and Kevin’s sky was starting to turn pink on the horizon.

  The wraith was there, and he was not alone. There was a second black figure with him, but this one was solid, not shadow. It was his (or possibly her) clothing that was black. Cape with a hood pulled low over their face, shirt, pants, everything was as dark as the wraith.

  Jimmy and Kevin didn’t have the option of running forward with guns blazing. The game automatically switched to a cut scene with the two heroes strolling forward to confront the big boss.

  “This is the part I don’t like,” said Nick. “I mean, we’re in the middle of this battle and we just stop to have a little chat? Lame. If I were Kevin, I’d just jump through the door and—”

  “Shhh,” said Aiden as the dialogue began.

  “So, you made it this far, did you?” said the black-clad figure in a man’s voice. “I must admit, I’m rather surprised.”

  “Please, can I choose, ‘Die, monster’?” asked Nick.

  “No,” said Aiden and Josh together.

  Josh took over selecting their speech options.

  “Who are you?” asked Kevin.

  The man in black pulled back his hood, revealing a very pale face and long, pointed teeth. He looked familiar. “I am Lord Wallachia, and I have run out of patience with the two of you.”

  Aiden let out an audible gasp and moaned, “Larry.”

  Nick gave him an odd look and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll take him out. Hit, ‘Die, monster!’”

  Instead, Josh chose, “Why have you unleashed your foul hordes upon this fair city?”

  “Fair city?” scoffed Lord Wallachia as he began pacing in front of Jimmy and Kevin. “This City of New York? This cesspool of both poverty and excess? This city, indeed this world, could be truly magnificent, but you pathetic humans have sent it into the depths of depravity and decay!”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Nick said, prompting a “shush” from both Josh and Aiden.

  “This world should be mine,” Lord Wallachia continued. “For far too long, I have sat in the dark. I have watched as others did what I should. They took the power that should be mine. The fools and scoundrels have all but destroyed this city, this country, this world. But no longer. I am not content to let others occupy my rightful place. Both worlds and all their people will be mine. All shall love me and despair!”

  “I never got that ‘both worlds’ part,” muttered Nick.

  “Shhh,” said Aiden again as Lord Wallachia continued.

  “And now, I’m afraid that I must give you to my most trusted lieutenant,” he said, motioning to the wraith. The wraith took a step forward and the game released Jimmy and Kevin from the dialogue screen, giving Josh and Nick control again.

  “Flashlights?” asked Josh.

  Nick nodded. The twin beams converged on the wraith, who jumped around, trying to dodge the light.

  “Enough of this,” bellowed Lord Wallachia, baring his fangs and rushing toward Jimmy and Kevin.

  “Auto crossbows,” instructed Nick.

  “Okay,” said Josh. “I was wondering why you insisted we get these. They’ve been pretty useless so far.”

  “Go left, and we’ll try to catch him from two sides. And don’t forget that the wraith is still running around somewhere.”

  Jimmy and Kevin did their best, but Lord Wallachia was too fast and too strong. What crossbow bolts he couldn’t avoid slowed him momentarily. Meanwhile, he slashed at them with his long claws and fangs. Just when things looked hopeless, Wallachia let out a scream and ran back inside the building.

  “Whew. We held him off long enough for the sun to rise and chase him off,” said Nick.

  “Vampires aren’t affected by the sun,” said Aiden in disbelief.

  “Sure they are. Don’t you know anything about vampires?” said Nick in even more disbelief.

  “Okay, so what’s next?” asked Josh.

  “Nothing. That’s it. We just beat the game.”

  The game’s programming took over once more, and Jimmy and Kevin were removed from Josh and Nick’s control. On the screen, the two bloody and battered warriors followed Wallachia to the door, but opened it to find no trace of him.

  They returned to their boat, finding a note on the deck. A close-up showed tight little cursive writing on old parchment. In a voice-over, Lord Wallachia said, “Well played. You may have foiled my plans, but not my ambitions. We will meet again.”

  “Setting up the sequel. That’s my guess,” said Nick.

  “Are you boys still up?” Mrs. F-G’s voice pulled Josh’s attention away from the screen.

  “Um, we sort of…” said Josh, looking to Aiden for one of his quick excuses.

  “Your mother will be up soon,” she said, not waiting for an excuse. “If you don’t want a heap of trouble, you better get to bed. I’ll clean up.” She started picking up the empty soda bottle. “Sugar Caffeine Explosion?”

  Josh opened his mouth, but the look on Mrs. F-G’s face told him that he had better do what she had said, and do it right now.

  “You too, Aiden,” she added. “You look terrible.”

  As Josh left the great room, he heard Aiden say, “I can’t yet, Ann. I have to talk to Larry.”

  Chapter Nine

  Some Tunnel Place in Brooklyn

  “Cleo, have you seen Larry?” Aiden asked before he’d even finished crossing to her desk. Lindsay and Britney stood up to peer over their cubicle walls.

  “No, I haven’t,” Cleo answered. “He hasn’t even called me. At least, not that I can remember.” Cleo had been having even more trouble with her memory than usual since becoming human again.

  “What’s wrong?” Lindsay asked, concern for Larry evident on her face.

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” Aiden answered. Turning his attention back to Cleo, he motioned to the small conference room and said, “Let’s talk in there.”

  Once the door was shut behind them, Aiden gave Cleo the brief version of what he’d seen in the Monster Mashers video game, particularly the part where the vampire and the wraith were in cahoots.

  “You think Larry has something to do with Mr. Midnight?” Cleo shivered. The mere thought of the rogue wraith still upset her.

  “Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know!” Aiden threw his hands up in the air. “That’s why I need to talk to him. There must be some rational explanation.”

  “And he’s not at his apartment?”

  “No. And he’s not answering his phone. I left him a bunch of messages, but he’s not calling me back.” Aiden thought back on his voicemail messages, each more frantic than the last, and took a deep breath, willing himself to calm down. “Could you just let me know if you hear from him, please?”

  “Of course. But, Aiden, don’t you think you sho
uld tell Siegfried about all this?”

  “No!” Aiden could feel a look of panic cross his face. “Not yet, anyway. Larry’s my friend. I have to talk to him first.”

  “I understand that, but even if he has nothing to do with Mr. Midnight, at the very least, he’s given away far too much information about the Imaginary World in that video game. Siegfried needs to know about it so he can start the damage control.”

  “We don’t even know if Larry had anything to do with that game.”

  “Aiden, please. Lord Wallachia? You know that was Larry’s title, way back when he was first turned into a vampire. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “I’m not saying it’s a coincidence. I’m just saying we don’t have the full story yet. Let me talk to Larry, and I’ll figure out where to go from there.”

  Cleo sighed. “Fine. But Aiden?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Be careful.”

  * * * *

  When Aiden got back home, he was surprised to find Steve waiting for him in the great room. Rosemary, who had put some Celtic music on, was trying to get Steve to dance with her. After Aiden stood watching Rosemary tug on Steve’s arm for a few moments, she looked up at him and said, “Wow, Aiden, you look awful!”

  “Yeah, I know.” He turned to Steve. “Have you heard from Larry?”

  “Uh, no.” Steve looked confused. “Uh, why?”

  “Larry Fancypants?” Rosemary asked, dropping Steve’s hand and clapping both of hers together. “I love Larry Fancypants!”

  “Yeah, he’s great,” Aiden said hurriedly to Rosemary. To Steve, he answered, “Because I need to talk to him.”

  “About what?” Steve still looked puzzled.

  “Can he come over?” Rosemary begged.

  “Maybe later,” Aiden told Rosemary. To Steve he said, “Because I think he might know something about…our shadowy nemesis.”

  Steve blanched beneath his freckles.

  “What’s a nesmaniss?” Rosemary asked Aiden.

  “Where is everyone?” Aiden asked Rosemary. He had just noticed how quiet the apartment was, especially for a Saturday.

  “Mom went running,” Rosemary ticked the family members on her fingers as she spoke. “Jackson is in his jogging stroller with Mom. Dad is working in the study. Mrs. Effigy went to the farmers’ market, and the boys are still sleeping!”

  “Oh,” Aiden said then turned to Steve. “Do you have any idea where Larry might be?”

  “I...I might,” Steve said.

  Without another word, Aiden turned and moved toward the foyer, motioning for Steve to follow. “Are we going there now?” Steve asked as he hurried to catch up.

  “Yes,” Aiden answered.

  “To Brooklyn?”

  “If that’s where we might find him, yes.”

  “But it’s just an old abandoned subway tunnel. He might not even be there. Are you sure you want to go right now?”

  “If there’s even the slightest chance Larry might be there, that’s where we’re going,” Aiden said as he pulled open the door to the utility closet and grabbed a flashlight.

  From somewhere behind him, he could hear Rosemary yelling, “Why won’t anyone tell me what a nesmenenis is?”

  Not wanting to waste time with the subways, they took a cab. As much as he fought against it, Aiden was asleep before they had gone two full blocks. He woke with a start as Steve punched his shoulder and said, “We’re here.”

  Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, Aiden looked around. They were in downtown Brooklyn, all right. It was pretty far from Larry’s usual stomping grounds.

  Aiden paid the cabbie and followed Steve out to the sidewalk.

  “So where next?” he asked Steve.

  There was a pause before Steve pointed out into the middle of the busy intersection. The only thing out there that Aiden could see was a manhole cover.

  “Are you sure about this?” Aiden asked Steve, eyeing the manhole skeptically. “It doesn’t exactly seem like a Larry kind of place to hang out.”

  “I know, man.” Steve shuffled his feet. “But I could swear this is the place I heard him talking about.”

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “I don’t know. He was…he was on his phone.”

  Aiden needed to ask Larry some questions before Cleo let anything slip to Siegfried about the game. He sighed and said, “Okay, let’s do this.”

  The two men waited for a break in traffic and then went to the intersection. They eased the heavy manhole cover off. For some reason, Steve happened to have a collapsible orange traffic cone in his pocket, which he set up in front of the now-open hole.

  “Uh, do you always have one of those on you?” Aiden asked.

  “It’s a leprechaun thing,” Steve answered, looking discomfited. He pulled out a little red plastic lobster, a bright yellow tennis ball, and a roll of blue tape. Answering Aiden’s puzzled expression, he said, “I have to have a representative of each of the visible colors on me at all times.”

  Aiden didn’t know as much about leprechauns as he thought he did. “Right. I’ll go first.” He clicked on the flashlight and descended the old, rusty ladder into the dark hole, a mixture of panic and determination coursing through him.

  The ladder wasn’t as long as he’d anticipated. “It’s only about ten feet down,” he called up to Steve, who came down the ladder while Aiden illuminated it for him.

  They stood side by side in a cramped earthen tunnel. It was so small that Steve had to stoop. Scanning the space with his light, Aiden saw that the tunnel ended at a concrete bulkhead about fifty feet away. An old metal door was set in the bulkhead. “Let’s check it out,” he said, turning to Steve. He noticed an odd look on his friend’s face, one he couldn’t quite place. Aiden chalked it up to nerves.

  “Wow, people used to be a lot skinnier, I guess,” said Steve with an anxious-sounding chuckle. The door was only about two feet wide.

  Aiden pulled at the door, which refused to budge. It was open a crack, maybe an inch or two, but would go no farther. He looked at the hinges closely and saw that they were rusted solid in that position. He handed his flashlight to Steve and, with a grunt, placed his fingers in the sliver of space between door and frame and pushed against the bulkhead with his feet. After a minute or two, he gave up.

  “Think it through,” Aiden muttered to himself. “How to get in…how to get in…”

  “Wolf?” asked Steve tentatively.

  “Wolf,” said Aiden with a nod.

  Thirty seconds later, Werewolf Aiden was having just as much success as Human Aiden. With one last harsh snarl, Aiden became human again and said, “Forget it. If I can’t get through there, I don’t think Larry can.”

  Steve stood rubbing his chin, looking at the door as if the solution was right in front of them if they would only look at the problem the right way. “How would your father have solved something like this back on the farm? Like, if a tractor got stuck?”

  “Depends. If it was in mud, he’d try to wedge something under the tires for traction. There was one time that a barn partially collapsed so that the door was only something like three feet high. He ended up cutting out a huge chunk of wall so that it would fit out.”

  “So if we can’t fit through the door, we take out the door.”

  Aiden continued staring at the door. It was heavy and it was metal, like something you’d find on a battleship. The concrete around it, however, was flaky and chipping.

  Looking around, Aiden found some old machinery that looked like it had been lying there since the 1800s. He picked up a thick piece of tarnished metal and took it back to the door, using it as a makeshift club and striking the concrete as close as he could to the door frame. With each swing, small bits of concrete flew.

  Aiden hacked away, talking to Steve in between swings. “I don’t know” (smash) “why” (smash) “we’re so” (smash) “intent” (smash) “on getting in here.” (smash)

  “Yeah, I know,” said Steve, timin
g his words, like Aiden, in between crashes. “It doesn’t look” (smash) “like he’s here.” (smash) “We can take off” (smash) “if you want.”

  With a shake of his head and another series of swings, Aiden indicated that he was getting through that door no matter what it took. He justified this to himself with the thought of finding Larry. A little part of him, though, told him that he was just tired and angry and wanted to smash something.

  It took a good twenty minutes, but Aiden chipped away at enough of the concrete so that the door, with an ear-splitting crash, pulled free from the wall and fell forward.

  As they went through the opening in the bulkhead, a wider, taller tunnel met their eyes. A rough set of wooden stairs led down to this larger area’s dirt floor. Going down the steps, followed closely by Steve, Aiden looked around by the light of Steve’s flashlight. The walls were made of large cut stones fitted together with mortar. The domed ceiling was of brick. The floor, where two sets of old railway tracks remained, was scattered with debris. There was no sign of life, not even any rats.

  “This place is pretty cool,” Aiden said, “but I’m starting to seriously doubt that Larry would come here.”

  Almost before he finished speaking, he could see, in a far bend of the tunnel, the mere hint of movement. Aiden crouched, senses kicked into overdrive, as he scanned the tunnel ahead. All he could detect were Steve’s quiet footsteps behind him as he backed away.

  “Larry?” Aiden shouted. His voice came back at him, echoing from all sides. Larry, if he was present, didn’t answer.

  Taking a few tentative steps, Aiden reached the outer range of the flashlight that Steve held. If he went much farther, he’d be walking blind.

  “Stay right there,” he called out to Steve. “I’m going to wander a little, but I want to be able to find my way back to the door.”

  “Okay.” Steve sounded a lot farther away than he should have.

  Aiden wasn’t much better off than if he were walking with his eyes closed. There was one thing that he could do that might help. The wolf. Taking a deep breath, he felt the familiar sensations (itchy face, sweaty armpits, and hunger for raw meat) that always accompanied his transformation.