Her bike tracks lead east. I pull off my boots and hide them next to the building and put on my rollerblades.
At the beginning of winter, Ally and I sank sheet-metal screws into the wheels of our shit pairs of rollerblades; the screws bite into the ice for superior winter traction. Cleatskates, we call them. I feel confident I can catch up—I’m fast and sure on cleatskates, and that heavy bag’s got to be slowing her down.
I take off, skating against the biting wind and falling snow, hoping to hell Otto stays in his office revitalizing as long as he usually does.
Shelby’s bike tracks snake around the building, turn north, then west along the promenade path, the bike-and-walking path that runs alongside the river. I skate like crazy, trying to make sense of this all. Is she stockpiling weapons? How many guns does it take to kill Packard?
I’m going so fast on the straightaway, and it’s snowing so hard, I can barely see. I pull off my goggles and just squint against the furious flakes. I push harder, crouched low for speed—and low visibility to cops. Or sleepwalking cannibals. Or other criminals. I pump my legs and arms, breathing so hard that my lungs feel dry, even through my face mask. Are the membranes drying out? That can’t be good. It would weaken them.
Stop it!
The tips of my eyelashes freeze. I round a bend. I catch sight of an oil-drum fire up ahead, but no people. Who made the fire? And who—or what—scared them off?
Otto says he and his men have been catching a lot of criminals with outstanding warrants simply by sweeping up people who are out past curfew. That’s nice for the city, I suppose, but the idea that cannibals and wanted criminals make up the majority of people roaming around at night isn’t comforting to me at the moment. Shelby’s tracks go past, so I follow, cringing, feeling like I’m in one of those postapocalyptic movies where the place is empty, but you know people are hiding.
I pass the fire without incident.
Shelby’s path continues along the promenade and goes under the Midcity Bridge—a postcard-perfect ambush spot. I brace myself and skate; if Shelby did it, so can I. Though Shelby’s armed to the teeth. And she’s so far ahead, I doubt she’d hear me if I screamed.
I make it under. The wind’s stronger on the other side of the bridge, and the blowing snow has obscured her path in places. I skate faster. Things feel bright. Am I hyperventilating? This is a lot of exertion after a big meal.
Stop it!
Eventually the tracks veer left, back to the city streets. I slow up and scramble over a curb, heart pounding. We’re nearing her neighborhood. I wonder if Otto’s demoralized cop has pulled himself together enough to get going. And what the hell is up with that? And Otto’s force field, and the operation on the floor below? The arsenal?
I go over a bumpy sidewalk, nearly losing my balance. The part of my face mask that covers my mouth and nostrils is stiff with ice. The tracks wind around a corner, up the next street, and there she is again, maybe five blocks ahead.
She’s obviously taking the guns home. And then what? Is it possible she’s become unbalanced in her obsession with hunting Packard? I’m thinking about her eagerness for my wedding to happen in such a speedy fashion. Was it all about Packard? And most of all, why couldn’t she have come to me with all this? Does she not get that I’d do almost anything for her? I pull up my face mask and wipe my nose and eyes with my mitten, feeling upset and worried for my friend.
And for Packard. She’s gunning for him. Literally.
I pass a hospital and some run-down shops, and then there’s a block of ramshackle houses chopped up into apartments. I brace as I skate through the dark stretches, thinking I see movement inside every nook and doorway. Worse, though, is when I pass under a streetlamp, because I feel like I’m on display.
Suddenly my left foot catches on something and I’m hurtling forward, arms outstretched. I slam head-first into a light post. Blinding pain in my head and forearm.
I lay in a snow bank, on my side, perfectly still, the sound of the impact echoing inside my mind: thuuuung.
I hit my head. On a metal post. Super hard.
I can’t believe it. Was the crack really loud? Panic comes over me like a quivery cloud as I analyze the sound in my memory. Yes, it was really, really loud, and a massive blow to the head is exactly what you don’t want when you’re predisposed to vein star. There’s no way to tell if you have vein-star syndrome, but it is thought to be hereditary, and it’s what my mother died of. A doctor once told me that for a lot of diseases, genetics cocks the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.
Or, smashing your head on a metal post pulls the trigger.
I stay there in the snow bank, weirdly baffled that it finally happened. Am I in shock? I pull off my gloves and face mask and touch the area. Ow.
I try to tell myself it’s just a concussion. People get concussions all the time.
But the pain is different, and intense. Real.
The eerie warmth seems to flow through the injured area in a warm, throbbing cascade of sensation. Dimly I try to think of the term for it. Internal cranial bleeding? Is that it? I know I know the term. How can I not think of it? That’s a bad sign!
If this is a classic vein-star bleed out, even the ER couldn’t help me now. Not that I brought a phone or anything. I rest my head back on the snow bank and look up at the sky. Things seem darker. Another bad sign. Panic thickens my throat.
This is it.
I pull myself up to a sitting position. It’s like an out-of-body experience, the idea that after all my freak-outs, I really am in medical trouble.
My extremities feel unusually cold. It’s my circulation slowing with the plummet in my blood pressure. I splay my hands in front of my eyes. It’s too soon.
Keep going. Stop her from hurting Packard, hurting herself.
I don't know where the thought comes from, but I find I’m levering myself up, almost reeling, steadying myself against the post again. I push off and skate on toward Shelby’s, trying not to bump too much, wishing I’d brought my boots, so I could shuffle along instead of skate.
My heartbeat whooshes in my ears. Everything seems unreal. With a lurch of emotion, I’m remembering the restaurant, Mongolian Delites. All of us together, the best of friends. I skate on, madly wishing I could skate right into the past, when anything was possible, right into the back booth, with Packard. I think back on the long days of Shelby and me, knocking around town. All my old comrades-in-crime-fighting. A family.
I turn onto her street, which is lined with more decrepit homes and boarded-up stores. At the very end, some eight blocks ahead, next to Shelby’s building, rises the notorious Tangle, Midcity’s highway interchange, haunting the night like a flashing, screeching, snarling death star. It almost hurts my head to look at it.
Parts of the Tangle’s twenty-some stories of curlicues are still open in spite of the curfew—it’s how people bypass Midcity. The Tangle is also the number-one place for people to throw themselves to their deaths; sometimes their bodies aren’t ever found in the mazelike dungeon of concrete and rebar below. The Tanglelands, they call it. So many die there. Strange comfort.
As I draw nearer, the roar of traffic heightens, a heavy-metal ocean of sound. Shelby’s building, at the very foot of the Tangle, is the most undesirable real estate in the city. I don’t wish for pretty lies out my window. Only truth, she’d once said of the view.
Things seem strangely simple now. She’s my friend, and I need her, and she needs me.
I finally catch sight of her again. She’s too close to the Tangle to hear me if I call, so I speed up, trying to close the six blocks or so between us before I pass out. She’s locking her bike outside the door to her apartment—I think. I squint. It could be a newspaper box.
My head feels light. I can probably function a few minutes more. If only I can make it to her.
Suddenly, a figure pops out of nowhere, just a block ahead of me.
I’m so shocked, I almost fall again. He doesn’t seem to see
me, though; he’s trundling away from me—in Shelby’s direction. But then he disappears around a corner.
I keep going, relieved, until the figure pops out farther ahead and again trundles in the direction of Shelby and the Tangle. Cannibal sleepwalker? But usually the sleepwalkers are in packs. He goes another block and disappears, but not before I catch the glint of metal. An axe. Shit! Is he stalking Shelby?
I have no weapons that will work against an axe. I have no weapons whatsoever, unless you count zinging, which definitely won’t work against an axe.
I speed up. It’s bad for my head, but I have to stop him, or somehow warn Shelby, and then I’ll hold him off until she can get one of her guns out. I have to stay conscious. Take a hit from an axe—it doesn’t matter. I’ll go down protecting my friend.
A focus, a purpose. I’m feeling like my old self again. Clearer in the head. Or maybe I'm delirious.
I veer off the sidewalk and start skating down the middle of the street. The axe guy ducked in somewhere, two blocks up—is he running up a parallel street? Closing in on her?
A form rushes out into the intersection in front of me—it’s him.
But he’s heading toward me now! I startle, lose my balance. Wheels whip out from under me—seemingly in slow motion. My feet fly up into the air, just before I slam down on my ass, with a major tremor to my head.
He’s laughing, loping toward me.
Crap! I scramble backward, hitting the curb.
Lights. I think I see fireflies.
He slows to a walk as he nears me, swinging his giant black axe in a figure-eight. “Such a loyal friend,” he says.
I stare in horror. He knows us?
His axe blade flashes in the night. “Holding me off, whatever it takes, while your poor brain bleeds. Or is it your imagination? Don’t worry, we’ll get that sorted out.”
A telepath. I immediately skunk my thoughts with a song—“Skyrockets in Flight, Afternoon Delight”. Telepaths can’t hear thoughts over repetitive, stuck-in-your-head songs.
“Just for that, I’ll kill you slow,” he growls.
I scramble sideways along the curb, head throbbing, knee white hot with pain. Around and around the man circles the axe, which is almost double the size of a normal axe, with the handle painted black.
Only one person uses an axe like that: the Belmont Butcher, the insane telepath who enjoyed tuning into his victims’ fear and horror as he hacked them up. But Otto caught the Belmont Butcher last year. The man’s been sealed away in a force field prison ever since.
I’m being attacked by a Belmont-Butcher copycat?
My head pounds blindingly as I run my song, loudly and as distinctly as possible, trying to recollect the stuff Packard’s right-hand man Francis taught us disillusionists about large, blunt weapons. Get out of range—that was one thing he always said. Getting out of range of something long like a bat or axe means running away fast…or getting up close. A guy can’t chop you with an axe when you’re right in his face.
And up close I could touch him.
I could zing him.
My heart beats like crazy. Even if I have to take a hit to get there, a strong zing would incapacitate him.
And it would feel so, so wonderful.
With a dark rush of eagerness, I decide that I don’t have a choice—I have to zing him. I concentrate on the song to cover my thoughts. I’ll be free from the fear for whatever time I have. I’ll finally feel good.
I pull off my mittens, watching the axe as he comes closer, just as Francis taught. I roll away as it slams down onto the pavement. That’s my chance: I hurl myself at him, hugging him, trying to keep my hand on one spot long enough to burn a hole in his energy dimension. He tries to shove me off him with the axe handle, smooth wood pushing against my jaw, my ear, but somehow I keep hold.
A clatter. He’s discarded the axe. He wraps his bare hands around my neck now, choking me, jerking my head back and forth. I grab his bare wrists, trying to get a breath—I can’t tell if he’s trying to shake me off or kill me, but I’ve burnt the hole. I call my fear to the surface and the flow starts instantly.
My fingers heat up as a tsunami of pure terror rushes into him, all to the soundtrack of “Afternoon Delight”. Things get fuzzy but I keep hold of his wrist, determined not to break the connection.
Just a little longer.
Darkness. Wind in my fingers. Falling, holding. Knuckles burning. The term death grip floats through my mind. The sense of release.
Chapter Seven
I wake up to something rough on my cheek.
Icy pavement.
It’s night. My toes are so numb they burn. Something hard under my ribs. I lift myself off it and find that it’s an axe. My fingers are burning with cold, too. My head throbs.
And it’s all perfectly fine. Wonderful even. Because I’m free of fear.
I grab the axe and sit up, smiling, surprised to see the Butcher on the other side of the sidewalk, back flattened against a brick wall, eyes wide. Does he think I’m going to try to chop him up? Why didn’t he take the axe while I was out?
Was I out?
“Did I pass out?” I ask him.
He just gapes at me, like I might go crazy on him at any second.
“Come on. Was I out? It seems like I was…”
“I know you were pretending,” he says.
“Mmm.” Irrational. But I just zinged him with all the fear I’d built up over the past sixty-four days. Most people can’t handle what I accumulate from one day.
I put my hand to the place where my cheek burns. Maybe I scraped it, but I can move my jaw just fine. My knee is killing me, but I decide it’s just bruised. I wiggle my toes to get the blood back in them. This could be the beginnings of frostbite. “Skyrockets in Flight” is still running through my mind, because that’s the kind of song it is. Sharp pain in my head. I recall falling and bumping my head. It seems ridiculous to me now, how worked up I got over a bump on the head.
I am a ridiculous person.
The Butcher copycat watches me mutely. Was he sitting there the whole time, thinking I was toying with him? Fear makes people stupid; I know that better than anyone. I look around for Shelby. I have to keep going. I have to stop her.
“Okay, how long was I pretending?”
No answer.
“So you’re supposed to be the Belmont Butcher? Is that your thing?”
He nods.
“Where’s your black apron?”
“Underneath my coat,” he whispers. His eyes go wide as I stand unsteadily with the help of a sign pole and the axe, which I use as a kind of crutch. I narrow my eyes, breathing in the cool, fresh air.
“Why were you following her? Were you specifically following her, or was it random?”
He draws back, panicked.
“Come on,” I say. “I want an answer.” I shift a bit, and my knee buckles under me; I hold the pole, unsteady on my skates, and that’s when the Butcher explodes up from the sidewalk, tearing away from me in the direction of the river. He trips and falls at one point, then scrambles up and continues, like I might be chasing him. He runs willy-nilly, away from Shelby. Away from the Tangle.
Works for me.
I turn and squint into the distance, toward Shelby’s place. No sign of her, though I can make out what I think is her bike. And I’m betting there are tracks leading from the bike into her building, if the snow hasn’t covered them. Luckily, it’s tapered off into small, icy flakes. Cold-weather snow.
I start off. Every stride hurts, not that I care. Pain is just pain, cold is just cold, and it’s idiotic to think I have a vein-star blowout. People hit their heads every day!
I clear one block, skating carefully. Two to go. Shelby’s faint tire tracks look like soft snakes twining in the snow.
Another block. The Tangle looms large and loud.
Maybe I should feel bad for giving in and zinging, but I’m far too exhilarated. When you dump out the heavy, dark emotions that weig
h you down, your mind gets strong, and your senses heighten—taste, smell, touch—you get more information from the world around you. And you feel so so wonderful! Because you’re free.
The extreme version of this freedom lasts for up to an hour. Glory hour, we call it. After that, the darkness starts building back up, slowly dulling your senses and your mind.
The Tangle noise grows louder as I reach her bike, which is chained to a sign pole. Her boot prints lead away from it, but not to the door of her apartment building. They lead in the direction of the Tangle.
Why? Is she stashing the guns down in the Tanglelands instead of in her apartment? It makes some sense if she knows her place is being watched, though it doesn’t seem incredibly secure—for her or for the guns. The Tanglelands, the vast wasteland below the Tangle’s coil of highway curlicues, is a wellspring of scary urban legends for a reason.
I follow her boot prints beyond where the street dead-ends, then through the wasteland that encircles the Tanglelands—a realm of garbage, blocky concrete boulders, and junked shopping carts. Not the best place to be on rollerblades. But the pain in my knee and head has become its own thing, not good or bad, just intense.
Shelby’s tracks lead around the perimeter of the Tangle, and I follow them, half skating and half walking, thankful for the long-handled axe, which makes a handy, though heavy, balancing aid. I move past hulking rubble chunks, over the snow-covered section of a broken-down highway, and around a concrete pillar, fat as a silo. Finally the tracks turn in through a slim opening concealed by twisted guardrails. I torque my body to squeeze through, knee protesting, and find myself in a dim cave whose low ceiling is formed by the underbelly of a highway long out of use.
The sound is different inside here—it has more of a vibrational quality, like sound inside a skull. The rubble and garbage on the floor obscure her boot prints, but I pick them up farther in, leading to a tunnel just big enough for a train to go through, if a train could run along a V-shaped gulley.
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