by Ben Zackheim
I immediately felt another presence in the room but I couldn’t see anyone yet. I sneaked around a few large display cases, being careful not to reveal myself to whoever may be there.
The first proof that I wasn’t alone wasn’t a sound, but a smell. A stench is more like it. If I had to explain it, I’d say it was a cross between rotten broccoli and any corner of New York City in the summertime.
I gagged. And that’s when I heard something. I assumed it was the creature that Tabitha mentioned. If she was real. Even though I was on the edge of a battle I found myself stuck on that idea. What if she’d been a mirage? Part of an elaborate trap. What if all those feelings I just had a few minutes ago had nowhere to go anymore?
I shook off the thought. There wasn’t time to crush on ancient Egyptian vampires. But if I made it out of there I knew I had a new type that would be pretty goddamn hard to find in real life.
I checked the map and saw that the shield display was right around the corner. I bent at the waist without taking a step and I peeked around the boots of a long-dead pillager.
Whatever the creature was, it used to be a man. But he was long-dead. He looked like a zombie, but he was the strongest-looking zombie I’d ever seen. He stood upright, shoulders back, face forward and he studied the case with the shield.
He reached out a hand and touched the glass as if to get closer to the relic inside.
Then he snapped his head and looked right at me.
His eyes were wet and sheer-white and his skeletal face resembled the best-preserved mummies. He opened his mouth and a sound like a distant scream filled my head.
Glock time. But by the time I’d aimed, he was gone. I walked slowly from my perch. I sensed that he knew where I was. But I had no idea where he was lurking. My least favorite situation. That feeling? It’s like being a seal treading water in the ocean with a Great White.
I could smell him. The odor was strong. Close.
I grabbed the top edge of the case and pulled myself up. I wanted to get on top of it. It was a risky move but it might buy me the edge if I didn’t get picked off.
Something grabbed my ankle and yanked me down.
I smacked my head on the floor and managed to scramble back on my hands and feet as he stepped toward me. He cocked his head, which made a sick crispy sound and clattered his teeth together. It wasn’t a threatening sound this time. It felt like a warning.
Then he turned his back on me and walked to the shield again. He glanced down at me and I stayed where I was. I had a clear shot. But I wanted to see what he was up to.
He pulled his rusted sword from its haggard scabbard and ran his bony fingers over the blade. Then he reared back and smashed the case into pieces with a single swing.
I was happy he hadn’t done that to me a few seconds before. He could have.
He reached for the shield and wrapped his hand around the edge. It looked right in his hands. It matched his crusty old armor.
“I can’t let you leave with that, buddy,” I said, aiming at his eternal smirk.
There was a moment there when I thought he’d make a run for it. He faced me and placed the blade back in its scabbard.
Then he was tackled from behind.
The two of them rolled out of sight and I made a run for them, both Glocks out and ready.
The zombie was reaching for its sword but its attacker was slapping its hands away as he placed his other hand over the dead warrior’s face. It wasn’t going to be a long fight. The zombie was getting thrashed by the same vampire that had stolen the hammer. The one with the white mask. Now that I was close to him I could tell it was an armored mask of some kind. He also wore a white chest plate under his coat.
“You like to let other people do the dirty work for you,” I said, firing off a shot at the end of my sentence.
The vampire dodged left and threw a piece of the zombie at me. It slapped against my face and made me miss the next shot. When I got my senses back the vampire was running from the room, shield in hand.
I ran after him but couldn’t help noticing the zombie on the floor. He was face down and he grabbed at the carpet.
If it’s possible for a dead man to cry then that’s what he was doing.
He dissolved into dust.
“Sorry Baldr,” I said. I’m not sure how I knew he was Thor’s friend, Baldr. Maybe it was Tabitha’s clue.
I ran after the vampire motherfucker.
Chapter 20
The place was dimly lit, but I spotted the vampire’s flowing black coat and white armor in the Renaissance Art wing. He was headed up the stairs. He probably had a ride out of there waiting on the roof.
I heard Tabitha’s voice in my head again.
You don’t want the hammer. You want the shield.
He ran into the Modern Art wing. I knew the room had stairs to the roof. I’d landed my helicopter there on one of my first solo flights to impress a date. It didn’t work out.
I needed to get ahead of him. I caught a glimpse of where he was, opened my portal and stepped in. I emerged where he’d just been. I looked down the stairs and saw him looking up at me.
I waved. “Hey. Shield please. Na-ah. Don’t run. I can do this all night.”
He ran anyway.
I slid down the banister, rolled, and ran.
Fox and Rebel stood in front of a Picasso. Their bodies were wrapped together. From where I was standing they looked like a Picasso.
“Hi guys,” I said. “You see someone run by?”
“What the fuck? Kane!”
“I’d zip up and get ready if I were you.”
“What is it?” Fox said.
“Vampire. The one who stole the hammer. He got the shield.”
“What shield?” Rebel asked.
But that was the moment when the armored vampire leapt up to the large filtration pipes over our heads. He looked at us and ran the other direction, his boots clanging on the thin metal.
“Fox, throw me,” I ordered.
Surprisingly, he threw me.
He didn’t even hesitate.
I always wondered what it would be like to have a partner who actually did what you told them to do. Now I knew. I liked it.
I soared over the art and landed nicely on a massive duct. The vampire was about twenty yards away. He held the shield up like, well, a shield. He knew I wouldn’t shoot as long as the relic was in danger. Smart. This guy thought ahead and he fought like he enjoyed it. I wondered if he was a vampire after all. He definitely worked for them. But was he human? There was something about the aggressiveness…
Rebel suddenly landed behind him. He turned, swinging his fist. She punched him in the face. I still have no idea how she managed to have fingernails like that and still make a fist. His head snapped to the side and he slid off the vent and hit the floor below with a thud. I dropped down and took a couple of shots at his rolling body. One of the bullets tore through the Jasper Johns which was a total accident even though I hate the fucking thing.
He’d rolled behind the wall of Matisse and appeared to be getting something ready for us.
But Fox dropped on top of him out of nowhere. I heard the grunts and thuds of a fight going on. I ran to help only to find that Fox had lost that round. The armored guy was turning a corner, headed back to the stairs. Slippery fuck.
“Rebel!”
“On it!”
She ran an interception route I watched from the middle of the room.
I could see them both headed for each other.
He leapt in the air at the exact same time she did. His leap was higher but hers was targeted, precise, Rebel-y. She’d guessed he was going for a man-sized grate that would support his weight. And she was right.
I saw The Lines. I knew exactly where he would land and I knew where Rebel would be when he did.
I could tell what his trajectory would be from the fall.
I could see where his center of balance would be.
I could make a really good
guess about what his body would tell him he needed to do to survive.
I aimed at where he would roll and run in two seconds, one second.
Bang.
Bang.
I hit him in the chest and the face, the two armored spots. I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted him alive. He’d kicked our asses last time and I needed to know who he worked for. I needed to know who he was. Something in me told me it was critical that we ID him. He was going to be a formidable foe or a vault of information.
My second shot to the face had made him drop the shield. It rolled out of sight so I ran for it.
I almost ran into Rebel. She had the shield in her hands.
She smiled and tossed it at me. I caught it.
“I can feel its power,” I said. “What the fuck?”
“That’s a great question, and well-phrased, Kane,” Rebel said. “I don’t know the answer but it’ll have something to do with the symbols on its face, I bet.”
“Let’s snag the creepy guy,” I said.
We both turned the corner.
“Dammit,” I said. “Three seconds. I took my eyes off him for three seconds!”
He was gone.
“That mother fucker is my new number one enemy,” Rebel said.
“I hate being number two,” I said.
“Then you’d better take him out, right?”
“We got the shield. That’s what counts.”
“Why? What does it have to do with the hammer?”
“I don’t know. But Tabitha told me we need to have it.”
“Oh, did Tabitha?” Rebel asked, coyly. At least I think it was coy. It sounded coy, but you never know with her.
“We need to interpret the symbols on the shield. They may hold a clue.”
Rebel studied the circle pattern of symbols. “I’m a little rusty on my loop-de-loopy, old-looking, Sanskrit, cursive hieroglyphics.”
“I know someone,” I said.
Rebel cocked an eyebrow and then her eyes widened. Followed quickly by a frown.
“You are kidding me, right?”
“He’s in New York,” I said. “He can read and speak every language that man or myth has ever spoken.”
“He sounds valuable,” Fox said, turning the corner to join us. He rubbed his head.
“He’s a fucking shitwipe,” Rebel had to add.
“He’s our fucking shitwipe, though. Come on.”
Chapter 21
A lot of people look for magic and claim they never see it. They’ve never been under the spell of Manhattan.
It’s like a magic spray of anonymity.
New York City is a place where a lot of people go to disappear. You can get lost in the numbers. You can even be alone in the numbers. Its barrage on the senses is so intense that it acts as both a stimulant and a shield against the rest of humanity. You can also dive right in and find the brightest spotlight in the world, dooming yourself to a relentless attack of attention for fifteen minutes.
Below ground? Well, step into the hole and reset yourself. The subway is where you can take a train from one world to the next, take the steps up to your new reality, and redefine yourself yet again.
The three of us took the 1 train downtown. We hoped we were under the Vamps’ radar.
“Our stop,” I said. We stepped off the train and looked for any signs of a tail or a trap.
Fox was not a subway rider. He kept looking around like he was having an anxiety attack. A vampire afraid of being buried undead? Weird. From the looks of it he’d never even been down there. Of course, with a vampire never say never. The number of lives they pack into one lifetime is beyond our feeble comprehension.
“I helped build this tunnel in 1947,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I haven’t been down here since.”
“Yeah?” Rebel said. “Dangerous business, right?”
“I lost two friends,” he said, his voice flat. “Both of them right around there.” He pointed to an obscure area between two columns on the uptown track. “TNT went off before it could be loaded up and stored for more work down the tunnel.”
Rebel and I stared at the spot for a moment. It was just another 100 square feet in Manhattan with a story.
“You sure the translator is still there?” Rebel asked me as we bought some cheap umbrellas from a guy at the top of the subway stairs.
“No, but he doesn’t like change, so I bet he is.”
“You haven’t spoken his name once,” Fox said, just loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of the rainstorm.
“We don’t like him,” Rebel said.
“You don’t like him,” I corrected. “His name is Harry. Harry Yee. He’s a former Spirit agent. Quit after the Paris attack.”
“He quit way before that,” Rebel snarled. “His heart wasn’t in the job for years and it got a lot of people in trouble. Some even died because he didn’t give a shit.”
Fox looked to me to get the other point of view. But she was right. Harry was, well, unsocial. He didn’t work well with anyone. Ever. It got to the point where he was stationed alone on a houseboat on the Hudson, just off Battery Park City. I’d never asked him if his ability to understand any language, spoken or written or gestured, was magic. He hated magic.
When we got to the dock we couldn’t see five feet in front of our faces, much less out to the river’s depths. We found shelter under a canopy near the dock master office and shook off.
“We need a boat,” Rebel said. “Be right back.”
She went inside the office, leaving Fox and me alone. We hadn’t been alone before. Someone was always around to run interference. Fox had made sure of that. Back on the Excalibur mission he’d talked about my father. It had made my heart stop. We’d been talking about Skyler. How he played so many sides of the game that he probably did some bad shit once in awhile. “You could have said the same about Kane's father, though, couldn't you?” he’d said, apparently not aware that I had no idea what had happened to my parents.
But I wanted to know.
And Fox clearly didn’t want to tell me anything.
“You knew my father,” I said. I hoped my bluntness would throw him off, but it’s hard to throw off a vampire. He didn’t flinch. He just looked at me. I stared back, not willing to look away. “Did you?”
“Yes, I knew him well.”
“Did you know I didn’t know what happened to him?”
“No. My comment on the boat was unfortunate. I apologize.”
“I don’t think it was unfortunate. I think it’s a good thing. I have questions.”
“And I have answers, but Skyler…”
“Stop right there. If we’re going to work together there will be zero secrets, do you understand? And the one thing that will make me boot you the fuck back to Camelot is if you and Skyler keep shit from me. I’m done with that part of my life.”
He just kept staring at me.
Rebel pushed the office door open.
Great timing, partner.
“You were right,” she said. “He is here. But he’s not on the water.” She sensed that she’d interrupted something. “Oooookay, what did I miss? You two accidentally kiss or something?”
Neither of us answered her. He looked at me guiltily. I frowned back.
“I’m not right, am I? You guys kind of look like you kissed.”
“Where is he?” I asked, breaking the staring contest. I kept forgetting you don’t try to outlast a vampire.
“He’s a few boats down that way,” she said, pointing to a line of expensive yachts getting whipped by the sideways rain.
We left our cheap umbrellas behind. They were useless in this kind of storm. Running down the pier’s long, broad wood planks felt like taking a cold shower in a prison. Yes, I know how that feels. Long story.
Harry’s boat looked exactly the same. If anything, it looked in better shape than when Spirit had given it to him. It had been several years since I’d seen the son of a bitch, but I learned at that moment
that he took good care of the things he liked. I hoped he still liked me enough to let us on the boat without shooting at us.
The first bullet hit the grass hill behind us.
“That was a warning shot,” Harry yelled from the deck of his boat. He had a Mossberg 500 trained on us. It was pretty steady too. I had no idea he was good with a gun.
“It’s me, Harry,” I yelled back, holding my hands in the air. I nodded to Fox and Rebel to do the same. They did but Rebel looked like it was everything she had to stop herself from tearing into Harry like a KFC Super Crunch.
“I know who you are, asshole. Turn around and go back to your mansion.”
“We need your help,” I said.
This shot was close enough for me to hear it zip by. I knew he had no intention of hurting us. Well, I knew he had no intention of hurting me. But I had to be careful. If he’d isolated himself since I last saw him then he may have lost his marbles.
“Harry, listen to me.”
“No, you listen to me, dammit! I ran away from you, and that asshole there with the fingernails, and all of your kind. I don’t want anything to do with it! You could tell me I’m going to save the world and I won’t give a shit. Now GO!”
“Sounds like pukedick has made up his mind,” Rebel said.
I smiled.
She was willing to play Harry’s game.
It was what I hoped would happen. It had always been our way of breaking the ice with Harry. Make no mistake Harry did hate us, but payment for his help meant a barrage of heartfelt abuse. We always came out of our time with him a bit raw. But we always came out of it better off, too.
“Pukedick, am I? It’s better than running around pretending my fingers are the penises I always wanted to have.”
“You’ve always wanted one penis, you tit.”
“I think you’re mixing up my penis with your wants.”
No one knew what the hell he meant by that. Even Rebel, who could jumble meaningful words in meaningless ways with the best of them.
“All right, all right. I’m out of practice,” Harry said, letting his rifle fall to his side. “Get on the boat. But dry off first. One drop of rain gets on my floor and you can fuck off for real.”