by Laura Wylde
Protect
The Phoenix Night Shift Book I
Laura Wylde
Contents
1. Tanya
2. Daniel
3. Tanya
4. Daniel
5. Jamie
6. Tanya
7. Jack
8. Tanya
9. Lenny
10. Tanya
11. Daniel
12. Tanya
13. Daniel
14. Tanya
15. Jamie
16. Daniel
17. Lenny
18. Tanya
19. Daniel
20. Tanya
Also by Laura Wylde
Afterword
Tanya
The subway has two different faces. During the day, with thousands of people shoving against each other to get on and off the train, the subway seems like one solid, living organism that breaks into separate cells as soon as it emerges from below ground. During the day, the subway is filled with noise.
Those who take the subway late at night belong to the evening. They are waitresses, bartenders and cooks clocking out at late hours, all-night service employees, party-goers and drug dealers, all clutching their possessions tightly, alert for stealthy movements. Only they are aware that at night, the subway hums with a life of its own. The floors hiss and thump with machinery. The walls echo with the sobs of the broken-hearted who could only express themselves underground. The tunnels whisper with sighs and rumors.
I liked taking the subway at night. If I was a pragmatic person, I would say it was to avoid crowds, but that would only be a half-truth. I am no more opposed to crowds than the average New York City dweller, but my solitary pursuits required me to be just a little more… solitary.
I’ve always had a fascination with mythology, particularly the ancient creatures that roamed through the palaces of Egypt and China, the great halls of Greece and Rome and haunted the castles of Europe. New York doesn’t have the great mausoleums and honeycombed, underground chambers filled with the dead that Europe has, but the subway invokes the same feeling of summoning something beyond the veil of our natural world. Late at night, it’s like a visit to a Lovecraft novel, filled with dark, creeping shadows and unearthly sounds.
It allows my mind to wander and my imagination to soar, maybe soar too much. I never felt completely isolated. Usually, there were at least a few people on the platform, waiting for the train. Usually, there were one or two young men in tight, scruffy jeans, their hoodies pulled up over their heads, obscuring their faces. Sometimes there was a beggar taking in as much warmth as he could before being told to move along, and a few late -night workers huddled close together. Tonight, there was nobody at all. It was eerie, and a little exalting. It fed my fetish for the breeding grounds of lore and the supernatural.
I jogged in place for ten seconds, slowing with each step of the count-down. It’s twelve- minute running time from the library to the subway station and I always like to do a proper unwinding afterward. I finished my jog-step, bent my arms behind my head for a deep stretch, then realized; the station was entirely too quiet. The steady hum and thump of machinery dropped deeper in the background as the dead silence of the tunnels seemed to swoop out, sucking away all other sound. A soda can rolled along the floor, its passage muffled.
I straightened slowly, my hands dropping to my sides. I looked around cautiously. Like most New Yorkers, I pay attention to sight and sound, yet this night, all five senses were on the alert. There was an odd smell, like decaying food, and a brackish taste to the air that had become completely still despite ventilation. My skin was crawling. My eyes darted from left to right, then searched as deeply into the tunnel as they could go, before I saw it.
At first, I thought it was a bat. There was just a flicker, and I let my breath out slowly, laughing at myself for being such a drama queen. But the flicker turned into something dark and enormous as it rapidly sped through the tunnel, then flew overhead, throwing a giant shadow. Never had I seen such an enormous wing span! It was crinkled and leathery, folding out from a hideous body that didn’t look bat-like at all. It had a bird-like tail and a set of talons worthy of a velociraptor, distinct breasts, along with the curved waist, hips and legs of a naked woman, and a very human, if unpleasant-looking face.
The talons were heading straight for my face. I screamed and swung my backpack in front of me, managing to keep it somewhat in check while I scrambled to hide behind one of the pillars. My backpack may have made contact a couple of times, but I know I didn’t stun or hurt the creature in any way. I think it was just temporarily blinded by the bright station lights, giving me enough time to hide and scramble for my cell phone.
I didn’t even think of what I would say. As soon as I dialed “911”, I began crying desperately. “Help me! You’ve got to help me! I’m being attacked at the Queensboro transit station.”
“Can you describe your attacker?” Asked the infuriatingly calm voice.
“It’s a harpy!” My lips moved with their own certainty, not allowing my brain time to contradict them. “I’m being attacked by a harpy.”
It was all I had time for. The harpy’s sharp hearing had followed my voice and I could see its giant wings stretching over me, its talons drawing closer. I left my phone turned on and dropped it in my pocket. According to all the detective stories on television, if you are kidnapped and leave your phone on, the police can trace it. If this harpy was going to carry me away to its nest, I’d at least want someone to find my remains. In the meantime, I wasn’t going to make things easier for it. I swung at it again, trusting that a pack full of books would at least slow down its malicious intentions. I shuddered as its claws ripped through the air and the creature screeched in my face. I swung again, thinking to myself, if this was going to be my last living moment, I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I’d get my pound of flesh.
Its malevolent eyes bored into mine. They sheathed with the sheer force of the wind, as turbulent as the tightly twisted knot of a hurricane. Its face was black and ravenous, the cheeks sharply drawn in, the mouth small and cruel. I felt the heat of its breath and shrank back, my hands tightening around my backpack straps for one last swing.
It was a well-aimed blow, but certainly not enough to ruffle the feathers of a full-sized harpy. It should have been able to sweep aside my feeble efforts, but something incredible happened. There was a flash of crimson color, a collision of bright red and dark, leathery wings, and a massive wind gust that caused the lights to crackle and blink. The harpy screeched with rage and reversed its flight, thundering back through the tunnel, the red ball of fire in hot pursuit behind it.
I took several deep breaths the way I had learned in yoga class; in through the nostrils, out through the mouth; and felt my scattered thoughts slowly return. I had been reading too much, studying mythological creatures for too long. They were causing me to hallucinate.
Best to get out of Dodge, I told myself, or in this case, the Queensboro Plaza subway station. I re-shouldered my life-saving backpack and made it half-way up the exit stairs when I saw three plains clothes policemen, badges on their belts, on their way down. They halted me and asked if I had made the 911 call.
I was so doomed! Not only had I begun to feel ridiculous, but the three detaining officers were some of the best eye-candy I had seen for months. They belonged on a Chippendale stage, stripping their uniforms to the screams of lavishing women. It was probably my fault for spending too much time at libraries where the only guys you ever saw wore one-half inch thick glasses and dressed like they still lived in the eighties, but I felt a full melt-down. “No,” I lied, not wanting them to think I could possibly be such a hysterical, delusional woman.
One of them frowned and peered at his phone. “
Are you sure about that?”
My cell phone was still on. Hell, they were probably still recording every word I said at the precinct. I pushed the button guiltily, clicking it off. “I did. I did,” I stammered, apologizing. “I just over-reacted.” I held up my hands like a prisoner. They were coming closer, surrounding me. They were probably ready to snatch me up and take me to the loony bin.
“Would you like to tell us what happened?” Asked the guy who had been clever enough to look at his phone. He had a voice that rolled over you like wild mountain honey.
Obviously, they were taking this police report very seriously. I sat down on the steps and buried my chin in my fists. It’s not the sexiest pose in the world for a woman surrounded by three gorgeous men, but there isn’t much to work with when you’re wearing sweats and a running jacket. If you can’t look sexy, at least try not to look vulnerable. “I just let myself get too carried away. The platform was completely empty, and I started day-dreaming while I was waiting. I imagined it.”
“You imagined being attacked?”
I fetched my reading glasses so I would look more like a nerd and used my index finger to push them over the bridge of my nose. “I imagined an aerial attack,” I said quickly, with a laugh that even sounded giddy to me. I continued trying to explain hastily, each word sucking away more of my credibility. That’s how policemen worked. If you tell one little lie, all at once you need a dozen others and at least one truth to deflect from them.“I was at the library all evening, studying for my thesis on common ancestral grounds for mythological creatures, world- wide. It’s an interesting study because so many were described in detail in the same historical epoch, but in different parts of the world.”
He looked at me silently. Trying to discourage him from seeing me as a complete nutcase, I added, faltering, “you can see how that would go. Studying mythology all night. Big imagination. Creepy subway station. A moth flies in front of a light and boom! You’ve got vampires and…Harpies.”
The officer sat next to me, clasping his hands in front of him. I knew it was a tactical maneuver for gaining trust; sitting close but not too close, making eye-contact, his hands where I could see them, but it was a good one. His eyes were like the thick clouds driving in summer rain, something you could fall into and drown in. “Okay,” he said gently. “You were thinking about your studies. What happened next?”
I feigned a light laugh. “That’s the silly part. Some guy in a batman costume jumped out in front of me. I think he was on drugs. He started swinging at me, so I swung back at him with my pack. It’s full of books, you know, so I got him a couple of times. It just made him angrier though and he started chasing me around, so that’s when I called.”
“And then he just left? After you called?”
“Yeah. He just vanished. I think he ran up the tunnel.”
He continued to gaze at me with those storm-cloud eyes. I’ve heard that some police officers are natural human lie detectors. I wondered if he was one of them. He didn’t seem very convinced. “Let’s go over it again, shall we?” He asked in that golden honey voice. “Starting from when you were on the platform waiting. I want to know what you thought you saw before dialing 911.”
Daniel
As soon as the emergency call came through, it was switched to CAPSU – Citizens Active Patrol Special Unit. That would be us; Officer Jamie Johnson, Officer Lenny Katz, Officer Jack Cardinal, and me, Sergeant Daniel Richards. We handled the bizarre cases, the lunatic fringe who danced on the edge of this world and the mythical one.
I hate to say mythical because the word implies it doesn’t exist, yet it’s every bit as real as Times Square, which we happened to save a couple of times. Well, we’re not allowed to talk about it, so who’s really creating stories of mythical proportions? Let’s just say for the record, goblins, dragons, trolls and even leprechauns, really do exist and they have a perfectly good realm to live in. However, like our blessed lunatics, they like to cross over. Sometimes, we can persuade them to go home. Other times, we are forced to resolve their trespasses a little more severely. As phoenixes, we are sworn to preserve the peace, but our first line of duty is to the defense of the noble, the kind and compassionate.
Don’t think I’m laying it on a bit thick. It’s an explanation we’ve had to repeat countless times, both to the creatures who felt we were traitors to our own dimension, and to the humans we had sworn to protect. You’d think by now they would understand, but they never have. Humans are naturally suspicious. They don’t trust anything different than themselves and are even more distrustful of special powers. For that reason, we’re careful and keep a low profile.
The New York City underground is perfect for the dark creatures that like to dwell beneath rock, in tunnels and caves. We’ve already had a few encounters with them in the Queensboro district, flushing out some trolls, a sewer demon and half-a-dozen goblins. We sent the trolls home after they signed a contractual agreement to remain under designated troll bridges, two of the goblins made their escape to Slodovia, while the other four were held in ADX Florence, and we had to kill the sewer demon. It had become so toxic, three men died simply from inhaling its fumes.
Jamie and I were cruising the west end when the dispatch came through. “Did she say harpy?” Asked Jamie, already notifying the rest of the team to meet them at the Plaza station with bells on their toes. “It’s not the new slang for a skank, is it?”
“Listen to the background noise.” Behind the frantic voice, you could hear the rush of giant wings beating the air, and high-pitched hissing that zoomed in and zoomed out of audio range. I glanced at Jamie, whose face was turning grim. I voiced what he was thinking. “She doesn’t have much time. I’ve got to get to help her now. Catch up with me in the subway station.”
I didn’t give Jamie a chance to say another word. The car didn’t even come to a complete stop when I opened the door and rolled out, my wings spreading across my back before I hit the pavement. It would take the rest of the crew several minutes to hit the Plaza entrance by vehicle. It took me only a few seconds.
I had to hand it to the caller. She was a fighter. She was swinging around a backpack like it was a lethal weapon, which threw the harpy a little off-balance. The existence of harpies has been so discredited, most people collapse in a terrified heap when they see one, making them very easy picking. Harpies aren’t invincible. They can be stabbed, hit, shot, burned, all the normal stuff. It’s just that they are stronger than humans, with very thick skins, bat-like wings and a lot of wind. Like a cat after a mouse, this harpy was becoming amused that she would have to work for her prey. Her attention was fixed on her victim, her lips drawn back from her serrated teeth, her talons stretched, sharp and gleaming.
Even then, the girl didn’t cower but faced her enemy fiercely. The claws were just inches from her face when I dove in to tackle the harpy. I took her completely by surprise. Frantically, she beat her wings and exhaled a long rush of air that spun her back toward the tunnel. I chased after her, riding the wave of air that followed the wind demon.
That wind blast carried me twenty feet into the tunnel, then died. I paused a moment to look around. She was either blending into the shadows or had fled through the exit of the next boarding platform. Either way, it was dangerous to continue pursuing her on my own. Harpies had friends in low places. I sped to the next station, streamed up the exit like The Flash, and skyrocketed back to the Plaza where I shapeshifted back to Sergeant Daniel Richards.
The team was shaping up. Lately, I had been leaving a lot of the early investigative routine in the hands of Jamie to see how well he could gain victim confidentiality. Victims are among the most peculiar people of all. They often see the crime as being their fault and are embarrassed to give a frank report, focusing more on what they could have said or done instead of details pertaining to the perpetrator. When the perpetrator is other-worldly, their minds race to find logic in what they have seen. They lie. They deny. They believe they are being
punished for their sins. Well, some are being punished for their sins, but its common knowledge among shape-shifters that the underworld of harpies, demons and trolls prefer innocence over corruption for their torments. It’s important to make victims face what they have seen and understand it’s not their fault. Harpies are just plain mean.
When I entered the subway terminal, I noticed my team was already beginning to make our caller feel at ease. Lenny and Jack were standing to the right and left, while Jamie sat next to the girl on the steps, encouraging her to open up about what she had really seen. Jamie has a persuasive voice. He was the one who had convinced the commissioner that mythological creatures were real and that a special unit needed to be formed for handling them. Right now, he was persuading his victim to believe we were taking her phone call very seriously and found nothing crazy at all about seeing a monstrous, flying creature.
“Let’s try again from when you were standing on the platform, daydreaming,” Jamie encouraged her.
I clattered down the steps to let my presence be known and joined them. “We promise we won’t laugh.”
Jamie gave her a broad grin. “Do you see? The voice of authority, Sergeant Daniel Richards. If he says not to laugh, we don’t dare crack a smile. I’m Officer Johnson. You can call me Jamie. Can I call you Tanya, Miss Omar?”
She nodded and chuckled nervously. “Good, good,” he said with satisfaction. “You were at the platform day-dreaming. Something caught your attention.”
“I wasn’t daydreaming,” she said, her courage returning. “I was very alert. Something about the station didn’t feel right.”
