Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2)

by Becca Mills

  “This reporter’s connecting three different cases. Sounds like she’s really looking into it. That’s not good.”

  “Lemme see,” Andy said.

  Gwen handed the phone over.

  “Huh,” he said, passing the phone to Theo. “Well, if all three of us go, we should be fine.”

  “Fuckin’-A, dude, you just jinxed us!”

  “Shut up, Theo. Don’t be a pussy.”

  Gwen put on an am-I-the-only-adult-in-the-room? look.

  I smiled, but the whole situation frightened me. Would my friends really have to go take this unknown creature down, with only scaredy-pants Yellin to rely on for guidance?

  The phrase “organic slurry” whispered through my mind.

  The questions of whether I was or wasn’t genuinely attracted to Cordus, would or wouldn’t sleep with him, suddenly seemed absurdly unimportant. We needed him back. Immediately.

  Chapter 3

  Zion stopped and cocked her head, her sleek black ponytail falling to one side.

  “That’s weird.”

  Behind me, Andy stopped. All I could hear was running water, the soft whine of the infrared illuminator on my goggles, and the echo of our breaths.

  We were in a Manhattan sewage tunnel, continuing the endless process of rounding up rat kings. Sounds gross, I know, but I was glad to be there instead of spending another day at the estate doing the same old, same old.

  Zion had gotten a bead on a rat king somewhere down here and was trying to find a tunnel that led in the right direction. But now she seemed to be at an impasse.

  “What’s up?” Andy asked.

  “It’s moving toward us,” Zion said. “It shouldn’t be doing that. They can hardly move at all.”

  Andy stepped around me and looked over Zion’s right shoulder. I peeked around her to the left. There was nothing to see except the tunnel, dirty, wet, and eerily green in night-vision, stretching away into darkness.

  “It’s coming,” Zion said. “Fast.” Her voice sounded tight.

  I started to hear something. A scrabbling sound — very faint at first, then louder.

  Andy grabbed us both and pressed us against the tunnel wall with his body.

  A tide of rats poured into sight, surging toward us in a two-foot high wave. The rats at the front of the wave half-scrambled, half-tumbled forward and fell, then were overrun by those coming after. They were on us in an instant, cresting as high as my waist as they passed the narrow spot we made in the tunnel. Then the tide slackened, leaving a few hundred stragglers scurrying after over a layer of crushed bodies.

  None of them had actually touched me. Either Andy or Zion had put a barrier around us. Probably Andy — he was much better with barriers.

  “Jesus, Beth —” Zion said, getting ready to blame me, for some reason.

  Andy said, “Shhh,” and she stilled.

  Something else was there.

  I felt Andy’s heart rate skyrocket. Whatever it was, it was bad. He groped down my side and grabbed my left hand. I felt him take Zion’s too. He wanted to be able to draw on our strength to reinforce his barrier. I tried to open myself to him but couldn’t. Supposedly my capacity was huge, but it was malformed and largely dormant. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t even find it.

  “Just take what you need,” I whispered. “I can’t help you.”

  We waited.

  I think I saw it last of all: something dark and low moving over the floor of the tunnel. It was maybe six feet long and half that wide, but irregular, shifting. I stared at it, unable to make out what it was. My eyes couldn’t seem to capture it. It was all wrong. A spasm of nausea gripped me, and I swallowed convulsively.

  “What the hell?” Zion choked out.

  No one answered her. Whatever it was, it wasn’t from around here, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t friendly.

  I thought about reaching slowly for my gun, but Andy and Zion were armed too, and neither of them was making a move.

  The thing glided toward us, paused, then flowed up the opposite wall of the tunnel, spreading out as though mirroring our shape. Its dark surface moved grotesquely. It reminded me of something I’d seen in the woods as a kid: a dead rabbit whose distended belly skin undulated as the maggots inside it moved and fed.

  Then the thing went still. With a tremendous jolt, we were yanked across the tunnel into it. At the same instant, Andy ripped something out of me, and I became aware of the barrier surrounding us. It was thinning where it was pressed against the thing on the wall, and the thinning hurt me. Then overpowering density surged through the barrier, repulsing the creature’s assault. It released us, and we fell, landing in a heap on the floor of the tunnel.

  I lay there, suffering. When the thing seized us, Andy’s barrier had provided some cushion, but we’d still moved fast and stopped hard. My whole body hurt. And having capacity pulled out of me had been pure agony. I could still feel the pain, though I couldn’t have said exactly where it was located. Furthermore, Andy was on top of me, and he was really heavy. And I was lying on a jumble of dead rats, sewage, and what felt like rocks.

  “Andy?”

  He still had a death grip on my left hand. I jostled him with my knee, and he groaned.

  “Goddamn, that sucked.”

  Slowly, he lifted himself off me and looked around. “You okay?”

  “I think so. Is it gone?”

  “Yeah. Dunno how far it went, though.”

  He helped me sit up. There were chunks of masonry and soil all around us. I pulled my knees up and rested my forehead on them.

  “I’m sorry, Beth. I know that hurt you.”

  “S’okay. We’re alive. That’s what counts.”

  Then I remembered Zion. She was still sprawled on the ground, unmoving. Andy leaned over and put a hand on her.

  “She’ll be okay. She’s just drained.”

  He sounded sheepish.

  Nolanders could share their ability to work essence with one another through skin-to-skin contact, but once you let someone draw on you, it was really hard to shut down the flow. Zion didn’t have a lot of raw strength, and Andy had taken it all. She’d be unconscious for a few hours, then sick for a couple days, then weak for a few more days after that. She’d also be really, really pissed.

  “You’re going to be hearing about this for a while.”

  “Yeah.”

  He grimaced. Then chuckled. I started laughing. We sat there in the rats and sewage for more than a minute, laughing our asses off, giddy at not having died.

  “What was that thing?” I said when I’d regained some control over myself.

  “I have no idea, but god it was strong. Like a tractor beam. All I could’ve done on my own was slow it down for a few seconds. Thank god you were here, Beth.”

  “What would it have done if it had gotten through the barrier?”

  “Flattened us. Gravity-worker of some kind, I guess.”

  The dirt and cement all around us made more sense. The tunnel wall we’d been pressed up against had been pulled along with us, leaving a gaping hole.

  “Gravity-working … is that common?”

  “I’ve sure as hell never heard of it, but that’s definitely what it was doing.”

  For about the millionth time, I wished I were capable of sensing workings. I felt like a deer wandering through a jungle full of tigers with a bag over its head.

  Then again, maybe in this case it wasn’t such a bad thing. I had a feeling I’d missed the worst details of what had just happened: I hadn’t known how bad things were until it was all over. There’s something to be said for that.

  “Oh man,” Andy said, slowly standing up. “I’m gonna have the world’s worst backache.”

  He reached down for me. “Can you walk? We should probably get out of here. That thing might come back.” He glanced at the hole in the wall. “Or the tunnel might cave in.”

  I stood up, balancing unsteadily on the carpet of rats and debris.

  “Yeah,
I’m okay. What about Zion?”

  Andy squatted down and heaved her over his shoulder. He straightened up with a pained groan.

  “Sonovabitch, that’s a load.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her you said so.”

  “I’ll pay you not to.”

  He set off back down the tunnel, and I followed, smiling into my sleeve.

  It took forty minutes to find our way back to the manhole we’d used to access the sewers. Stupidly, we’d been relying on Zion’s tracking sense and hadn’t bothered to make a note of our turns. When we got there, Andy had to haul Zion up to the surface by rope while I inched up the ladder alongside her, keeping her head from lolling around and hitting things.

  All in all, it was a real drag.

  Once we were all up, I went to get the car while Andy stayed with Zion near the manhole — he could make a barrier or disguise that would keep them unseen, whereas I couldn’t do anything of the sort.

  Given the looks I got while walking to the parking garage, I sure wished I could pass unseen. And unsmelled. New Yorkers generally give off a powerful seen-everything vibe, but being coated from head to toe in mud, sewage, and rat guts was apparently beyond the pale.

  Fortunately, the parking garage where we’d left our big black sedan — one of the estate’s — wasn’t too far. I got there as fast as I could and handed my chit to an attendant who clearly didn’t want to get too close to me and refused to accept the sodden five-dollar bill I offered as a tip.

  Swearing under my breath, I drove back to the alley where I’d left Andy, and together we wrestled Zion into the backseat. She was still unconscious.

  “You sure she’s okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I examined her more thoroughly while you were gone. She has some contusions, but nothing serious.”

  His voice had a whisper of pride to it.

  Andy’s mother and father were both doctors, and he’d wanted to be one too. When he turned out to be a Nolander, he’d had to abandon those dreams — none of us got to lead lives of our own choosing. But once his capacity had developed enough, he’d started to learn healing-workings. A serious injury would be too much for him, but he could diagnose problems and fix little things. I knew that made him feel good. And who knows? Learned workings are something you can keep studying your whole life. As the years passed, he might become quite adept at healing.

  That said, he’d never achieve the level of someone naturally gifted in that area, like our friend Kara.

  Andy’s gift in air-working meant most of what he did was combat-related. He seemed to accept his tough-guy job, but I sensed it saddened him a bit. He was the kind of person others unconsciously gave a wide berth — a tall, muscle-bound mixed-race guy with a shaved head and a lot of scars — but he’d much rather help people than hurt them.

  He should’ve been planning his next stint with Doctors Without Borders, not hunting rat kings in the sewers.

  I got in the driver’s seat and Andy stretched out as best he could on the passenger side. I pulled out into traffic, and we enjoyed a few minutes of silence as I got myself headed back uptown toward the G.W. Bridge. Then Andy sighed and pulled out his phone. I noticed he’d wisely put his in a Ziploc baggie before heading into the sewers. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Then again, if his phone were as trashed as mine, he wouldn’t have had to do what he did next, which was call Yellin.

  A gifted healer and a handful of household staffers were waiting for us when I pulled into the underground garage. They immediately lifted Zion out of the car and laid her on a gurney. The healer, Duncan, examined her on the spot. When, after a few seconds, he pronounced her “just drained,” the tension level went down markedly. An excellent tracker like Zion was valuable. Everyone knew Cordus would be pissed if something happened to her.

  Duncan sent Zion to the infirmary to sleep it off under supervision. It only took one person to push the gurney, but the rest of the nursing staff went along. That didn’t surprise me. The household staffers tended to stick together.

  The only one who stayed behind was the poor schmuck who’d taken the car keys from me. He faced the unenviable task of detailing a large sedan three people had just coated with offal and sewage. I glanced his way but quickly looked down when I saw the sickened expression on his face.

  I didn’t know most of the estate staffers, who were basically servants. Cordus had effectively nurtured division and resentment between those of us who had the strength to fight Seconds and those who didn’t. We got perks but didn’t tend to live very long; they got safety but were treated as menial labor.

  I’d tried to make friends among the staffers, but only a few of them had responded to my overtures. Most of them were unfailingly polite and completely uninterested.

  Duncan turned to Andy and set him right with a brief laying on of hands. Then he touched me, and the bruising and achiness in my neck and back disappeared.

  For not the first time, I wished I were gifted in healing. Like Andy, I’d be playing offense when my gift matured. Serious offense.

  “Okay,” Duncan said, “you two are good to go. You’re supposed to report to Mr. Yellin ASAP.”

  Andy and I shared a look. Figured.

  We took the tunnel to the house and went our separate ways to clean up.

  Twenty minutes later, we were seated in Yellin’s office. I got things off to the worst possible start by telling him I needed a new phone. For some reason, unexpected expenses really ticked the guy off. I was pretty sure Cordus had enough money that him buying a cell phone was like me buying a gumball, but Yellin didn’t seem to see it that way.

  After a great deal of sighing and frowning, Yellin produced a new phone for me. I took it and set my old one down on his desk. It made a beige wet spot on the pristine paper blotter. That was good for one more very deep frown.

  After disposing of the offending phone, along with the hanky he used to pick it up, Yellin asked for a detailed account of our experience. He listened without comment while Andy described what had happened. When he finished, Yellin just sat there, staring down at his clasped hands.

  His knuckles were white.

  That didn’t strike me as a good sign.

  I could tell Andy noticed it too. He had an absolutely-must-not-glance-at-Beth kind of posture going on.

  After about a minute, the silence became too uncomfortable. I had to fill it.

  “Mr. Yellin,” I said, “was that thing what killed the boy in Brooklyn?”

  Yellin didn’t look up. He didn’t acknowledge my question in any way. He simply said, “I will assemble a team for action as soon as Zion is functional. That is all.”

  “Mr. Yellin,” Andy said, “Zion won’t be back to battery for days. Isn’t there another tracker we could bring in? How about Deborah Rosen from Atlanta? She could be here tonight.”

  “Miss Rosen’s range is inadequate.”

  “She can do twenty-five miles. That would cover the city itself.”

  “And what makes you assume, Mr. Duff, that the entity remains in the city?”

  “I’m not assuming, sir, but it’s a place to start. Miss Rosen could start here, maybe rule out the immediate area. Then Zion could take over in a few days, when she’s well.”

  Yellin shifted uncomfortably.

  I couldn’t understand why he wanted to delay. Heck, I didn’t want to see that thing again, and I sure didn’t want my friends to have to deal with it, but this is what people like us were for. It was the whole reason Cordus and the other powers had gathered Nolanders into organizations: weird shit couldn’t be allowed to happen because it could lead to the discovery of the Second Emanation, and that would be Very, Very Bad — from the Seconds’ point of view, at least.

  In the end, Yellin capitulated. “You make a valid point, Mr. Duff. I will look into Miss Rosen’s availability. That is all.”

  Andy and I stood up to leave.

  I had a feeling Yellin wouldn’t be “looking into” Deborah Rosen
’s availability all that hard.

  “We need to talk to Theo and Gwen about this,” Andy said, pulling out his phone to text them.

  I’d followed him back to his suite and settled on a couch. Yellin’s weird reaction clearly required discussion — it’s not smart to let anomalies go unaddressed when you’re the one taking all the risks.

  “Okay, Theo’s on his way,” Andy said.

  “Damn. Gwen can’t come,” he added a few seconds later. “She’s in Pennsylvania dealing with some baddie or other. You want a beer while we’re waiting for T.?”

  “What’s the baddie? And no, I want some lunch. Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Yeah, I am. Hold on.” He spent another minute texting. “It’s a green man.”

  I gasped. “She’s hunting a green man? Alone?”

  “She says it’s not nearly as strong as the one you dealt with in the spring. And she’s got Williams with her. It’ll be okay.”

  I sat back on the couch, still worried. Green men were the S-Em’s best assassins and bounty-hunters. One had been after Justine in April. It had taken Cordus to kill it. Just containing the thing had been the best we Nolanders could do, and even that had been a stretch.

  I really hoped Gwen’s assessment of this new one was accurate.

  “Seems like we’re getting these incursions constantly, doesn’t it?”

  Andy stood and headed for the fridge. “Yep. That’s ’cause we are. Word’s gotten out that no one’s minding the store. When the cat’s away, the mice will play, and all that.”

  “Green men aren’t mice, that’s for sure.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever. Still gotta catch ’em.”

  “Ah. The patented Andy Duff don’t-worry-’til-you-can-see-the-food-stuck-in-their-teeth approach to monsters.”

  He grinned and shrugged again.

  Andy’s suite was quite a bit bigger than mine — more of an apartment, really. He got busy in the kitchenette and made a couple sandwiches.

  “Drink?”

  “Just water.”

  He brought me my food. I balanced the plate on my knee and took a big bite of sandwich.

  “Wow, this is great. What’s in here?”