But you already know that, don’t you? You knew the moment you called the court and gave them everything they needed to get inside my head.
Red and blue lights flashed in the distance. Worthington couldn’t see the smog, but he knew something wasn’t right.
He glanced back one final time at the girl, furious that she was still fast asleep. They had tried everything, and all they had received was some fidgeting and flickering of her eyes.
No matter. With the numbers we have, they won’t stand a chance.
Worthington prepared to give the command.
Times Square, New York City
“Something’s wrong,” Jennie stated. “They should be here by now. What are they playing at?”
Baxter glanced around the Square, turning his head as though expecting them to arrive at any moment. “Where would they be coming from? It’s impossible for an army of specters to sneak up on us unannounced. They have to be somewhere around here.”
Jennie screwed her eyes shut, searching her mind for anything that might make sense. Had Worthington and his men tricked her again? Was this some elaborate prank to keep them on edge and play with their minds while they hit elsewhere?
No. Jennie didn’t think Worthington was that smart.
Then where the fuck were they?
Carolyn couldn’t believe what was happening. A week or so ago, she had been a simple dog-walker—a typical New Yorker, worried about making her rent. Now she was a specter, standing in a horde of other specters, awaiting a battle she was less than prepared for. She had only glimpsed what other specters were capable of, and truth be told, she was afraid.
The encounter in the Plaza had not been fun. Having a chunk of her face blown off had hurt. Sneaking up on rooftops and spying on specters? Well, that had been a little fun.
But were all specters like that? Was this just a part of their life now?
She missed the mortal side of exploring the city. She regretted never doing the typical touristy stuff visitors got to explore. She had always taken for granted the things the city contained, and now it was too late to enjoy it with the ones she loved.
The Statue of Liberty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even the Empire State Building.
Yeah, right. You hated stairs, she thought to herself. You could barely handle three flights of stairs, let alone…
Something tugged at her from the recesses of her mind, a throwaway comment she had heard but had not fully digested at the time.
A blurry memory came to her mind, useless facts she had been taught in school, which were of no use to her.
Until now.
“Can any of you guess which building has the most steps among any of the buildings of New York?” a chirpy, bright-eyed Mrs. Hannigan had asked the class back in the spring of 2009.
“Liberty!” one kid cried.
“Chrysler!” another declared.
Carolyn’s hand had gone straight in the air. How could these goofballs not guess? “The Empire State Building!”
“That’s right, Carolyn.” Mrs. Hannigan beamed. “The Empire State Building contains over fifteen hundred stairs if you travel all the way from the bottom to the top. Although, if it were up to me, I’d recommend taking the elevator to Floor 102. Much easier, and takes considerably less time…”
The memory dispersed, replaced by the dark rooftop overlooking Times Square. Several specters on lookout with Carolyn and Feng Mian studied the ground below while Feng Mian breathed quietly beside her.
“At least HQ has stairs.”
“Like, fifteen hundred of them. At least this ascension will be over in a matter of seconds.”
Carolyn’s eyes grew wide as the memory of the loyalists in the alley replayed. She shoved through the spectral crowd and made her way toward Jennie and Baxter.
There was a disturbance in the gathering of specters as Carolyn came bursting through, out of breath.
“What are you doing?” Jennie asked, seeing her alarm. “What is it?”
“The Empire State Building,” Carolyn wheezed. “They’re all inside the Empire State Building. I overheard… They said…”
Carolyn took a couple of deep breaths and told them what she had heard from the specters on the rooftop.
“Talk about hiding in plain sight.” Jennie peered toward the tops of the buildings, trying to get a good view of the enormous tower. It was impossible from the ground. She’d have to gain a higher vantage to see.
“Show me where you followed the specters,” she instructed. “And fast.”
“Of course,” Carolyn agreed.
They sprinted to the alley she had spied on the specters from.
Jennie called back to Baxter to stay in control of their forces. There was still no sign of the other party, and now Jennie was beginning to grow worried.
She had once been told that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
She had discovered it was complete bullshit.
They scaled the fire escape, taking two steps at a time. Before long, they made it to the rooftop, and the Square and the city unfolded before them.
Several dozen police cars were parked around the perimeter of the fog. More and more officers were arriving every second, alerted to a possible terrorist threat in the Square.
Little did they know how true that was.
That wasn’t where her attention lay, however. Jennie looked out across the rooftops and saw the Empire State Building standing out higher than all other buildings surrounding it. Illuminated by the silver of the moon, it looked more like some ghostly obsidian obelisk than the timeless piece of architecture synonymous with the city skyline.
Jennie’s eyes were drawn to the very top of the building. Although they were far away, Jennie knew when she was looking at. a spectral glow.
Hundreds upon hundreds of specters crammed up to the windows. Several of them out on the balconies.
“What the hell are they doing?” Carolyn asked.
Jennie shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think we’re about to find out.”
Before she had even finished her sentence, a specter leapt from its balcony and began to speed down the side of the building.
From afar, it looked like a minuscule shooting star, but it signaled the start of things. More were following, specter after specter taking the plunge and jumping from their vantage point. Many of them dove headfirst toward the concrete of the streets below, a shower of shooting stars born from the top of the Empire State Building.
“I thought Baxter said no specters had ever fallen from such a height? That it was dangerous for a specter to do?”
Jennie watched in awe, unsure of what to reply to the new-born specter. She settled for a gentle hand on her shoulder.
In any other situation, the sight would have been beautiful, but Jennie now knew this meant destruction. The number of small, ghostly stars that fell was overwhelming. As more and more came, it began to look more like a spectral waterfall, bodies gushing from the rim of the precipice and tumbling into the streets below.
How had that volume of specters had been contained in the top floors of the building? It seemed impossible
Jennie leaned over the edge of the rooftop and called down to Baxter and the specters below. “This is your two-minute warning. They’re coming.”
The specters planted their feet and prepared for the oncoming horde.
“We should get back down there,” Carolyn said, tentatively stepping to the edge of the roof.
Jennie hesitated, feeling torn between helping the specters on the ground and kicking the ass of the specter who had caused the fight to happen.
“What is it?” Carolyn followed Jennie’s line of sight and rolled her eyes. “I get it,” she told Jennie. “If you need to go play hero, do it. We can keep them all distracted while you do your badassery.”
Jennie gave her a curious look.
“Well, they don’t call you Rogue for nothing, do they? Wish me luck!” Carolyn smirked and leaped from the roof wi
thout waiting for a response. Her laughter could be heard long after Jennie hopped over the rooftops and made her way toward the Empire State Building.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Times Square, New York City
Baxter watched Carolyn descend with an impressed smile on his face. She dropped like a stone, landing with serene grace as she bent her knees and her fist hit the ground.
“You’ve been watching too much Spider-Man,” he teased as she ran over, the thrill of the fall clear on her face.
“They’re coming,” she replied quickly. “All of them. By the hundreds—we just saw them.”
“Where?”
“From the Empire State Building. They were throwing themselves off like kids tossing handfuls of stones over a bridge.”
Baxter nodded in understanding. “Hence your own personal acrobatics?”
Carolyn shrugged. “I figured I’d try it.”
The lights on the enormous screens around the square began to flicker. At first it was nothing more than a few odd pulses, as though occasional surges of electricity were causing them to blip.
Now they were nothing more than static and noise, the entire circuit network of Times Square interrupted by the volume of spectral activity surging their way.
Cops called out on megaphones, spreading uncertain warnings to the mysterious originators of the fog. They were starting to get officers into biohazard suits, tightening zippers and ensuring there would be no leaks from the unknown gas.
And now they could see them approach. The specters fighting for the crown rounded the corner in a furious march. Their faces spoke of destruction, and there seemed no end to their number as they bled down the streets and filtered into the Square.
“Positions!” Baxter shouted.
The Spectral Plane pulled themselves into a tight circle. They had reserved two-thirds of their force for the center of the Square, and already it looked like nothing more than a raindrop in a vast lake of specters.
Baxter couldn’t believe it. How many loyalists were there truly in New York City? How many had they recruited in the last few days? He had never taken the time to understand the full make-up of what the city held and who aligned with who, but he found it hard to believe this many specters had been in hiding.
Not hiding. Living their afterlives in peace. Undisturbed and with little need to get engaged in conflict, until a maniacal pork-chewer decided to rally the troops and cry the queen’s name in vain.
What would they all think if they knew the truth?
They surrounded the Plane within a few minutes, and even then, it was like the Thanksgiving Day Parade had hit the afterlife. The streets were tight with bodies. Men, women, children, specters of all races, creeds, and professions.
What were we thinking? Baxter thought. I’ve never seen anything like this.
Standing several feet taller than the rest of the crowd, Baxter scanned for any sign of Worthington. He should be easy to spot with his comically large bearskin hat, but he was nowhere in sight.
Typical.
When they were fully surrounded, Baxter took a step forward. There was a small gap ringing the Plane as each party stared daggers into the other’s eyes.
Baxter searched for their spokesman, wondering if any of their party would have any final words before everything began. He jumped back in surprise as Rico appeared in front of him with a sadistic grin. Camo and her friends chuckled from behind.
“We meet again.” His eyes darted away from Baxter, finding Carolyn in the huddle. “Oh, hello again, darling. I see your pretty face is whole again. Want me to make it ‘hole’ again?”
Several specters chuckled behind him. Carolyn growled.
Baxter took a step toward Rico, his great bulk looming over the little man in the pinstripe suit. “You’ve got one chance to back away and put all this behind you. We don’t need this fight. We can learn to live in harmony, in a world where people can make their own choices on who they choose to be.”
“A noble point,” Rico conceded with a slight nod. He pinched fingers along Baxter’s lapel and teased the fabric playfully. “Only, you twisted what was going to be my speech. It was going to go something like this…” Rico cleared his throat, his words now amplified. “You’ve all got one chance to surrender and come over to the crown before we unleash our fury and drag you into the abyss. It doesn’t have to be like this. Just take your oaths and pick the right path. That’s the best path for every specter on this side of the Pond.”
A small grin teased Baxter’s lips as he imagined Jennie’s anguish at the expression.
“This is your final warning. Fight for us or die.”
Carolyn couldn’t control her pent-up anger. “We’re already dead, you prick! Save your words and give us a fight so we can rise as the underdogs and go down in history as the specters who overthrew the traitorous crown.”
Her words carried far, and several of the crown’s most loyal specters muttered among themselves, wondering what the girl meant.
Rico knew he had to act fast to keep the situation under control.
“Very well,” he boomed, turning back to his crowd. “Time’s up.”
He clapped his hands once, then twice, and the whole square erupted.
Jennie detached herself from spectral power the moment she left Carolyn.
The rooftops were scattered before her like an extreme version of an Army assault course. She ran and leaped over vents, hopped up walls and jumped across gaps as though she had been doing it all her life.
Which was only a slight exaggeration, since she had begun training at RAF and Army bases almost as soon as she’d joined the paranormal court, attaching to the local specters and undergoing specialist training. She thought nothing of crawling through bogs, leaping over wooden walls, and going on ten-mile runs before sunrise. Anything to become the best of the best within her world.
Little had she known at the time that she was one of the very few conduits in the world.
Now, those years and years of practice and training were coming back to her instinctually. She had always believed in the phrase, “just like riding a bike,” and now she put that belief into action.
Jennie’s instinct led the way as she scanned the route across the rooftops. When a building took a dramatic rise or a dramatic drop, she scaled or ascended appropriately, as though it were nothing more than a training wall she was conquering at four-thirty in the morning.
She kept an eye on the crowd of specters below while she ran. She knew they would have their work cut out for them. She knew there would be the possibility of some specters turning up for the sole purpose of partaking in what promised to be the fight of the decade, but that didn’t truly prepare her for what she was seeing.
They crammed into the streets until there was no more room to move. They burst out farther than the reaches of the fog, and now there was barely any space left in the Square. Behind her, the tiny figure of Baxter could be seen squaring off with another specter, but that wasn’t for her to concern herself with now.
Like any undead monster or creature, the only way to take it down was to chop off the head.
And this head had swollen with his own ego.
The Empire State Building grew closer, and she was soon within sight. The crowd of specters trickled to nothing, and Jennie wondered where she would find Worthington. She hadn’t seen him as she had flitted along the rooftops. She assumed he’d be hard to miss, what with his hat.
Certain there were no more stragglers, Jennie ran down a nearby fire escape and cleared the final story in one bound. She landed with a gentle thud and sneaked across the street.
The entrance to the building lay before her. Jennie cursed when she found the doors were locked. Without a specter as her guide, she was going to have to gain entry to the building the hard way.
She rounded a corner, clinging to the shadows. She felt spectral energy nearby and craned her head, seeing a lone specter on the lawn.
The specter clu
tched her shin, rolling around in agony. Jennie cautiously approached.
“Goddammit!” the woman cried. Her face was bloated, making her eyes look like buttons embedded in pillows. She took a sharp intake of breath. “Jesus Christ and all that is mighty! Ow!”
“Are you okay?” Jennie asked, unable to ignore a woman who was clearly suffering.
“Does it look like I’m okay?” The woman tried to sit up, but her face creased in pain and she lay down again, leg pulled to her flabby chest. “Jump off the building, they said. It’ll be fine, they said. Yeah, right. Clearly, they’re not familiar with ankylosing spondylitis. Ah, man!”
“Everyone else seems fine,” Jennie assured her, unsure what else to offer. “Not a single person seemed to be in pain.”
“Well, they clearly don’t have chronic conditions like I do, do they?”
Jennie studied the woman, wracking her brain to try to remember any specter she had met who suffered from a condition they had experienced in life. As far as her knowledge stretched, death cured any and all ailments the living suffered from. “Are you sure it hurts? Maybe it’s just in your head. It’s a long way down from the top.”
The woman sat up sharply, her tears and complaints ceasing instantly, replaced by venomous fury. “Look, missy. Just because you’re young and your body is kind to you, it doesn’t mean you understand my plight. I don’t need some twenty-something bimbo tramp to tell me what I do and don’t suffer from, okay?”
Jennie was taken aback. “Easy. I was just asking since I’ve never seen this before. Have spectral doctors diagnosed your condition?”
“Of course not, the bunch of outdated old quacks. I’m self-diagnosed. I know what I had in life, and I know what I have in death. I’d show you the articles online if I had a working phone.”
Now Jennie understood. She had seen this woman’s type before. Although death did conquer mortal ailments, it couldn’t erase a person’s mental ailments.
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 38