Worthington remembered that night in Central Park. The moment Rico and Rita had exploded from the rock and been released into the world. Was there something in the process of spectral entrapment which amplified specter’s powers?
Worthington stared at the girl and licked his lips. He was more certain than ever she would have a vital role to play in what was to come.
He had no idea how right he would turn out to be.
Red Hook, Brooklyn
Jennie returned to Red Hook a little before sundown. The traffic had taken considerably longer than she had hoped, and now she was tense about what was to come.
Her heart lightened when they turned the corner to the old mill and saw the huddles of specters all eagerly awaiting their next order. There were hundreds of them now. Specters of all backgrounds, ages, genders, and beliefs, who were all prepared to fight for each other and the city they inhabited.
Jennie found Lupe inside the building, deep in discussion with Tanya and her followers. They had been getting worried about the lateness of the hour, and they breathed a visible sigh of relief when Jennie walked through the door.
Tanya waggled a phone in the air. “Thank goodness. We’ve been trying to call you.”
Jennie drew her phone out of her pocket and found the screen was blank. She held the power button and got no response. “Stupid smartphones. Remember when a few hours’ charging would get you five days of service?”
Tanya and Lupe nodded nostalgically.
Jennie scoffed. “Actually, I remember the days when pen and paper were the only means of communication. I’d spend hours handwriting letters to Churchill, just to have to wait weeks, sometimes months, to get a response.”
Tanya coughed. “Churchill? You don’t mean Winston Churchill?”
“No, I mean the nodding dog from the fucking adverts.” Jennie smirked. “Of course, I mean Winnie.”
“You were pen pals with Churchill?” Baxter laughed, unbeknownst to Tanya. “And you called him ‘Winnie?’”
Jennie nodded. “That’s right. He used to swing by Buckingham Palace occasionally to speak to King George about political matters in the lead-up to the Great War. I always hung around the palace to engage in dealings with the paranormal court, so I bumped into him a few times. We got chatting, and we became fast friends.”
“I didn’t have Churchill down as the ‘fast friend’ type.” Tanya chuckled. “I guess you can never judge a book by its cover.”
“I suppose I should have learned to forgive him sooner,” Jennie continued. “Winnie had a busy life and a lot on his plate. I probably should have kept up our correspondences, but I grew impatient and, well, time got him in the end.” She stared at the ceiling, lost in her thoughts. Eventually, she shook her head and clapped her hands. “Enough of that. Shall we run through things and check that we’re all in order?”
Lupe nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
They went around the mill and performed a final headcount of the specters. Now that all the recruiters were back, people spilled out of the building. They counted around five hundred and fifty specters, although it was difficult to be accurate when they kept moving around or disappearing and appearing through walls.
Lupe ran through the plan with the nominal leaders of each group of the spectral army. Jennie, Baxter, Lupe, and Feng Mian joined with the groups of specters who they’d be going into battle with.
With the Square being so large, they knew it would be easy to be surrounded, trapped in on all sides by the enemy. With that in mind, the primary group was going to take their position in the center of the square and draw the majority of the attention. They hoped the crown Loyalists didn’t have any idea how many specters they had in the city and would therefore underestimate the total.
Additional waves would then burst into action from the surrounding buildings, catching the loyalists off-guard in a pincer attack.
They weren’t sure how many of them would die the true death that night. They had no clear indication of whether Worthington had been able to recruit anyone with the power to exorcise, but they had to remain vigilant and prepared. One way or another, it would end in Times Square. One way or another, the crown would know the name Spectral Plane.
“We’re ready to distract the mortals,” Tanya told Jennie, feeling incredibly uncomfortable at referring to her fellow humans in that way. “Are you sure you can be careful enough with your ‘magic’ bullets to avoid shooting the living?”
Jennie glanced down at the weapons and cocked her head. “I’ve got it covered, don’t worry.”
Tanya did not look certain. “If you say so.”
When Lupe had finished giving his instructions, the five leaders made their way up the fire escape and sat on the old tin roof of the mill. From this height, they could see across the Hudson toward the city skyline.
The sky was awash with oranges, umbers, and pinks. Jennie took a deep breath and muttered, “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight.”
Tanya chuckled. “You think there’s any truth in that?”
Jennie shrugged, the steady evening wind nipping her skin and causing it to prickle. “Who knows. Whether or not superstition is real, we’ll need all the help we can get to pull this off.”
Baxter hid a laugh behind his hand.
“What?” Jennie asked.
Baxter waved her question off. “Nothing.”
Jennie sensed his embarrassment and flashed a grin. “No, tell me.”
“It’s inappropriate,” Baxter replied.
Lupe turned to Baxter. “That’s not helping your case. Tell us!”
Tanya’s head flitted back and forth between Lupe and Jennie. “What?”
“Baxter’s thought of a dirty joke.”
Baxter grinned. “You’re going to be disappointed. I was just thinking when you said ‘pull it off.’ You don’t get a lot of that as a specter.”
Jennie raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, my friend. You’ll find the right lady one day.”
Baxter’s grin vanished. “Yeah, right.”
“You know how crazy this is?” Tanya asked. “It’s like we’re all participating in a delusion. This is like watching a child talk to their imaginary friend.”
“You can have him.” Jennie laughed.
Tanya scoffed. “Not until you tell me his joke.”
“Oh, it was nothing.” Jennie leaned back on her hands and stared at the sky. “Baxter just wants you to pull him off.”
“He wants me to what?” Tanya’s face melted into comic revulsion when Jennie provided a gesture to translate.
“Jennie!” Baxter protested at the same time.
Lupe and Jennie laughed while Baxter choked, waving his arms in protest as he babbled apologies to a woman who couldn’t hear him.
All the while, Feng Mian sat deep in thought, staring straight ahead without a flicker of the deep need for revenge that bubbled inside showing on the outside. He was ready to face the bastards who had caused him to fail in his mission to protect the child.
Chapter Forty-Seven
New York City, USA
The specters marched across the bridge by the hundreds, their voices ringing through the night. If the city had been quiet, they would have been heard all the way to Mount Vernon. If the mortals had been able to hear, they would have stopped in their tracks and wondered what raucous mob was bearing down on them.
Jennie knew a thousand war songs. She knew hundreds of hymns. Prisoners sang while working. Railroad workers and miners had united in song. She knew from experience that singing together boosted the morale of troops as they marched into battle.
Some might think the Jets had won the Super Bowl early. Some might think the city’s largest flash mob was coming. The specters sang from their diaphragms, and the message was clear.
We are coming.
Not that Jennie heard it. Between the protection of the car, the volume of the radio, and her own singing, she would have struggled to hear the specters who managed to ke
ep in good stride with the cars crawling in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
She had taken the opportunity to race ahead in her Mustang. The car was everything she needed to burn off her anticipation ahead of what was to come. It cocooned her and gave her a rare chance to cut loose. She didn’t pay any heed to the cars containing Tanya and her followers falling behind her.
She was Rogue, and she was singing her own song. It was Sorry by Justin Bieber, to be exact, a song she had been unable to get out of her head since she had stumbled across it stuck in traffic on London’s M25, and to which she shamelessly knew all the words.
“Is it too late to say I’m sorry? Because I’m missing more than just your body…”
Jennie glanced in her rearview mirror and smiled to see the horde of specters walking through the cars and along the bridge.
Bieber moved into his own bridge, a slight melody change.
The sound system in the car was tremendous, and the car’s body prevented a lot of the sound from escaping. Jennie realized she wasn’t making the most of it and dropped the window. The opening of Queen’s We Will Rock You set her heart pumping. She was ready for a fight by the time Livin’ on a Prayer played. Back in Black was the cherry on the cake.
Jennie thanked Spotify for the memories. While she didn’t truly believe she would be killed in the battle, she made sure to enjoy every ounce of pleasure she got from the music before she arrived at Times Square.
She knew she had been blessed to survive this long, and never once took for granted that every day on this Earth could be her last.
Jennie’s heartbeat steadied in her chest when she turned down Forty-Fourth Street and the pulsing dome of artificial light broke the night sky. “Well, Worthington. I don’t know what you’ve got waiting for us, but be warned. We’re ready to bring the thunder.”
Times Square, New York City
Jennie parked the Mustang a short way away from the square. The last thing she wanted that night was for her beauty to get damaged, as unlikely as that would be in a spectral fight.
Not with my bullets, it isn’t.
She made her way down the street at a brisk pace, knowing the best way to remain inconspicuous was to blend in with the crowd. Tourists wandered by, oblivious to Jennie as their breath was taken by the sight of the city’s glowing streets.
Jennie ducked into the shadows of a nearby alley and waited. From here, she had a perfect view of the Times Square clock. Her heart leapt when she saw the time was a quarter to midnight, and there was no sign of any of her specters, or any of the opposing force’s, either.
Shit. Where is everybody? She glanced around again and pulled out her iPhone to confirm that the time on the analog clock was right.
Jennie closed her eyes and opened her senses to tune into their presence. Times Square was loud, and the bright lights interfered with her concentration, making it difficult to lock onto some sign that they were nearby. It was a good thing she was a highly-trained operative with over a century’s experience in cutting to the chase. She focused on her breathing, blocking out everything else except for the energy she was seeking—
There.
Now that she’d heard the spectral choir, she couldn’t unhear it. The din of the living and the opera of the dead combined to give Jennie an appreciation for the lives of schizophrenics. She dropped her connection to the specters and sighed with relief when the inside of her head was her own again. Soon they would all be here, and when they finally fell silent, that’s when the event would begin.
But first, the square needs to be cleared.
Jennie searched for Tanya and her team. They should have caught up with her by now, and there they were. She headed for the sidewalk on the other side of the square, where Tanya was looking around. The dozen or so mortals accompanying Tanya looked shifty in their hooded cloaks, but it was New York at night, and no one cared about another group of performance artists.
The first signs of disturbance rippled through the crowd when Tanya’s group spread out like the spokes of a wheel and created a giant circle, ignoring the blaring car horns as they stepped into the street.
Tanya raised a hand and shouted a command, and her followers all pulled something from their pockets.
What they held was small enough to ease the worry of the people thinking they’d been caught up in a terrorist attack. Others grumbled about street artists, and one man got out of his car to yell about the obstruction caused by the people who had stopped to get the whole thing on camera.
Jennie wasn’t too keen on causing mass panic, but Worthington wasn’t giving her very many options, and it was the fastest way to clear the civilians out before they got hurt for real.
It was impossible to see what came next.
Tanya shouted again, and each person threw their vial to the ground. The sound of the vials breaking was lost when the screaming began.
The liquid sparked a small explosion of white light. Jennie thought it looked like the end of a giant Bonfire Night sparkler.
The people recording on their phones jumped back in surprise.
Jennie wasn’t worried they would be caught on camera. She was confident in Hendrick’s word, and half a moment later, the old man delivered.
The sparks faded, leaving afterburn images in everyone’s eyes. By the time their eyes adjusted, plumes of thick blue smoke had begun to cloud the square.
The clouds expanded rapidly and formed a protective smog across the streets and surrounding buildings. Just as Jennie had predicted, the civilians screamed in panic and ran away, eager to clear the area.
Jennie heard the sounds of spectral chanting grow loud. The Spectral Plane horde appeared around the corner.
Baxter broke free from the crowd and ran ahead, spotting Jennie in the exact place she said she’d be. He grinned when he came to a stop alongside her. “You ready?”
Jennie nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”
She stared into the fog, praying everything would go to plan. She closed her eyes as she latched onto Baxter and made herself turn spectral.
When she opened her eyes, the world was entirely different.
While the fog was as impenetrable for the mortals, the square was as clear as day for the specters. In spectral form, Jennie could see the scattered people searching for each other.
To her, this was one of the most important steps of the plan. She had no idea what damage Worthington’s spectral army could do, so she needed to clear the mortals out of the area and get them as far away as possible from the battle zone.
The clock showed eleven minutes until the showdown. Would Worthington be that precise?
Jenny ran toward a woman who had her scarf pressed against her face, terrified to breathe the gas in.
The woman jumped at Jennie’s hand on her elbow. “Please! Don’t hurt me.”
“Madam, I’m not going to hurt you,” Jennie assured her. “But we need to get you clear of the area.”
The woman looked around wildly. “My fiancé. Where’s my fiancé?”
A voice rang out from nearby. “Christine!”
“Ben!”
Jennie moved her grip from Christine’s forearm to her hand. “Follow me.”
She could see Ben as clearly as if it was midday and the sun was shining. She brought their hands together and pointed them toward one of the streets leading off the square. “Keep walking straight. You’ll be fine.”
There were still a few people wandering aimlessly in the fog. Jennie spent the next few minutes repeating her tactic. She worked fast while sirens blared, announcing the arrival of New York’s finest. The outside of the square was teeming with police, and fire and rescue were in position by the time the clock showed two minutes until the showdown.
But she was done rescuing stragglers.
Jennie returned to her position and gave Baxter and his group a thumbs-up. She was out of breath and sweating.
The police formed a living cordon around the unnatural barrier, remaining just over arm’
s length from the smooth edge. They held their service issued weapons ready for any danger that came from the fog.
Jennie nodded at Baxter.
Baxter’s face straightened. “Places, people!”
The specters obeyed. The Spectral Plane group took their place in the center of the square and awaited the arrival of the crown loyalists as the final minute ticked by.
“It all comes down to this,” Baxter muttered.
Jennie steeled herself, drawing both her pistol and the Big Bitch. If her prediction was right, tonight would show the guns more action than they’d seen in all of her missions in the last decade combined.
In the land of the living, red and blue lights flashed. Cops spoke on the radios. Several voices called commands. The fog remained thick and opaque, spreading slowly down the streets of the main square, traveling as far as the edge of the square before drifting straight up and back on itself. The magic in the potion contained the fog to its intended area.
In the land of the dead, the specters waited patiently. To them, there was only the silent anticipation of what was to come. Baxter shuffled impatiently, armed with his wrench and his gun. Several of the specters in the crowd had their pistols, assault rifles, and shotguns ready. Most were armed with knives or other utilities they had been fortunate enough to carry into death.
The clock chimed midnight. Twelve long tolls rang from the bell. Jennie was reminded of the eerie music of the graveyard, punctuated by the chapel’s bell as it rang loudly across the reverent hills.
When the final toll sounded, they waited.
And waited.
One minute turned to three. Three minutes turned to five.
Jennie folded her arms. “He’s late. How rude.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Empire State Building, New York City
Everyone was in place to strike. Specters lined the windows and balconies of the highest floors of the Empire State Building. Worthington stood at the open window, his eyes narrowed against the wind, watching events unfurl below.
If there was one thing he had learned about Jennie, it was that she was punctual. He knew she would be itching to get things going. This fight would be about more than the physical; it would be a battle of wits, too.
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 37