by Nora Roberts
“I’ll sleep when you sleep. You may need me.”
“When we find our place, and we will, will you marry me?”
Reaching out, she touched his cheek. “Yes.”
She watched the sun come up, chasing away the dark, and let it fill her with hope.
* * *
It took longer to reach the Thirty-third Street station than Arlys had calculated. They’d had to stop, find concealment several times on the trip. More than once she knew they’d made it because Fred heard the engines, the footsteps, the gunfire before she did.
Faerie ears, she supposed.
In the gateway of Times Square, once thriving, crowded, boldly lit, the enormous screens and digital billboards loomed like blank, black doorways to the unknown. A sudden flash, an explosive jag of horizontal lightning, struck just south of Herald Square and shot the madness into sharp relief.
Bodies, wild-eyed dogs feasting, the rubble of shops, the jumble of cars, buses, and vans spread across Herald Square—as if an angry hand had heaved them together over the street and sidewalks.
Someone, something laughed.
Someone, something screamed.
Arlys grabbed Fred’s hand and, in the eerie afterglow of the flash, ran. At the entrance leading down into the dark, she stopped, catching her breath and fighting to clear the panic.
Keep your head, she ordered herself. Stay alive.
Her companion might have wings and better hearing than a schnauzer, but Fred still struck Arlys as too cheerful to be cautious.
“Listen, we don’t know who or what might be down here. In the terminal, in the tunnels. We’ve got a long hike, and one without an easy escape route if we need one. I’ve got a gun, but I’ve never actually shot anything.”
“I really don’t think you should.”
The scream came again, and the terror in it rolled down Arlys’s spine.
“If we have to defend ourselves, we’re going to. We’re going to walk as fast as we can, as safely as we can, and you can keep those insanely good ears of yours peeled.”
“I can see really well in the dark, too.”
“Another plus. We stick together, just like we did on the way here.”
Arlys took out her flashlight, aimed it down the steps. She looked over—they stood at the corner of Macy’s.
She thought, There will never be another holiday parade, never another sale.
There will never be another miracle on this or any other street.
“Let’s go.”
She had to steel her own nerves to walk down and down. Every step had her heart thudding faster, louder.
What was she doing here? What was any sane person doing here?
“Do you hear anything?” she whispered to Fred.
“I don’t hear a thing. We’re good.”
They crossed in the dark, following the single beam of light, boosted themselves over the turnstiles.
“I always wanted to do that.” Fred’s voice, even lowered, echoed. “For the fun, not for the not paying.”
Arlys put her finger to her lips, playing the light everywhere, fearing she’d see more dead bodies littering the terminal, the tracks.
Or worse, live ones poised to attack.
Using the flashlight, she followed the signs for the PATH to Hoboken.
She scanned the platform, the tracks, the platform across the tracks. Her heartbeat leveled a bit—until she had to face the fact they needed to go down farther and into the tunnels.
No turning back, she thought. Once they started down the—ha-ha—path, there’d be no turning back.
“This is it.” She sat, let herself drop down. Even with her knees soft, the descent stole a little of her breath.
Fred sprouted her wings and floated down like a feather.
“I might be able to fly with you for short distances. I haven’t tried it with a person yet,” Fred admitted. “But I’ve taken a few dogs that way to this shelter we started. I wish I could’ve gone by first, gotten one to take with us.”
Since one of Arlys’s fears was running into a family pet gone feral, like the ones gnawing bodies on the street, she was fine without a dog.
“You know about the third rail?”
“Arlys, I might be a pretty new faerie, but I’m twenty-one, not two. You have to stop worrying so much.”
“I feel responsible.”
“For doing the right thing? You are. I was really proud of what you did. It’s when I knew, for sure, I was going with you. There’ve been some rumblings.”
“Rumblings?”
“We’re—the people like me, the magickal people—we’re not very organized yet. A lot of us are just figuring out what we are. And some, when they figure it out, go a little nuts, or they go full evil. So we’ve mostly been trying to make those safe zones and help people, help the dogs and cats and other pets that got left behind or let loose when their owners got sick. But we’ve had a few working scrying mirrors or crystals, and have been trying other spells, to find out what’s really going on.”
Arlys had no idea what a scrying mirror was. “Crystals? Like a fortune-teller at a carnival?”
“Some of them probably had latent power, but anyway, yeah, like that—and other ways. We figured out it was worse than what they were telling us, but it’s hard to say how much worse, since there are a lot of conflicting reports, you know? Lots of chatter. But we figured worse and going to get even more worse. That’s why we’ve been trying to help people get out when we can. And when you told everybody everything you knew tonight, I knew I’d help you.”
She stopped, tapped Arlys’s arm. Arlys switched off her light, and let Fred guide her through the dark until her back was pressed to cold tiles.
She didn’t speak, didn’t ask, but put her hand on the butt of the gun.
She heard the leading edge of male laughter, with enough mean in it to tell her they wouldn’t be friendly.
“Did you see that asshole squirm!”
She caught the light now—two beams cutting through the dark, growing closer, brighter.
Now and again they sliced over the walls. If they swept over her or Fred, could she use the gun? Could she aim and shoot another human being?
“Pissed himself. Fucker pissed himself!”
“Don’t see why we can’t hunt another down here. Plenty of asshole fuckers in the tunnel.”
“Come on, most of those are crazy. It’s more fun to make them crazy, then kill the fuckers. Let’s get a woman this time, and not one of the hags down here. We do her a couple times, then nail her on the tracks, do her again before we gut her.”
“You’re a sick bastard.”
More laughter. She heard their boots ring on the ground. Saw their silhouettes behind the beams of light.
Could they see hers?
“Let’s get two. I don’t want your sloppy seconds.”
A beam skimmed the wall an inch from her face; her hand tightened on the butt of the gun.
If they hadn’t been so busy laughing about their plans to rape, torture, and kill, they would have seen her.
They walked on, close enough she could have reached out and touched them. Continued along the tracks, arguing about the best hunting ground.
Beside Arlys, Fred quivered. “I don’t know enough to stop them,” she whispered. “I don’t have enough yet to know how. I hope someone does. They can’t hear us now, or see the light.”
Trusting her, Arlys turned on the flashlight.
She counted her paces. Fifty. A hundred. A hundred and fifty.
This time Fred gripped her arm, fingers digging hard. “Do you smell that?”
“I smell musk and urine and beer puke.”
“Blood. A lot of blood, and … death. But no sound, no movement.”
In another twenty paces, Arlys smelled it. She knew the scent as it had streaked over her face, even into her hair, from Bob Barrett.
Then her light picked up something on the tracks. Beside her Fred let out a muffled
sob, but kept going.
A body, Arlys realized as they came closer. A body nailed to the ground through his hands and feet. His mouth hung slack in a battered face, showed broken teeth. And all the blood that had spilled out of him when they’d sliced him across the belly formed a gleaming, dark pool.
When Fred lowered to her knees, Arlys swallowed down her rising gorge, tugged at her.
“We have to go. He’s gone, Fred. You can’t do anything for him.”
“I can. I can say a prayer his soul finds peace. I can do that for him.”
Arlys straightened, stood by—now with the gun in her hand.
She didn’t have to ask herself if she could aim it or fire it at another human being, not when she looked at what human beings had done to a boy who looked barely twenty.
Damn right she could.
CHAPTER NINE
Fred rose, letting out a breath that shuddered with tears.
“He was younger than me.”
“I wish—” Arlys cut herself off. Wishing solved nothing. “We have to keep going.”
“I know, and I know it doesn’t matter to him now, but I wish we didn’t have to leave him alone here, too. That’s what you were going to say.”
“But we have to. You take the flashlight.” Arlys intended to keep the gun in her hand now. “There are probably more like those two. If you sense anything, we hide. If hiding doesn’t work, we run. If running doesn’t work, we fight.”
She curled a hand around Fred’s arm as they walked. “If fighting doesn’t work for me, and you can get away—”
Even in the dark, Fred’s shock gleamed. “I won’t leave you!”
“If only one of us can get out, one of us gets out. I need you to go to Park and First in Hoboken. Be there at three a.m. My source’s name is Chuck. Get to Chuck, tell him what happened.”
“I can do some things. I’m still learning, but I can do some things.”
“You do whatever you can to get to Chuck. If he doesn’t show by five, find a safe place. Find more like you, Fred, and get out.”
“Would you leave me behind?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not telling the truth. I can hear it in your voice. We’re both going to get to Chuck. You have to think of the positive, of the light, or the dark takes over.”
You have to prepare for the worst, Arlys thought, the incomprehensible worst or you could die in the dark.
They kept walking, following the beam of the light as the track switchbacked. The musky stench grew stronger, as did the lacing of piss, the sudden, gagging odor of vomit. And again, blood.
Arlys felt herself growing almost immune to it when the light caught a stain, a pool, a trail. And worse, when Fred played the light over the wall.
NEW YORK IS OURS!
THE RAIDERS
Written in blood, it served as warning and triumph, as did the dripping skull beneath it.
“Like the two we saw back there,” Fred whispered. “They like to kill. Some of them follow the Black Uncanny. The magickals who hunt humans, and us. I don’t know why.”
“There is no why. It’s just—” Arlys let out a stifled scream, stumbled back.
“It’s just a rat,” Fred told her as it scuttled away from the light. “There are lots of them down here. Don’t worry. You don’t have to be afraid of rats.”
“Just a personal phobia.” One that turned her skin to ice, churned her stomach. The boy on the tracks. The rats would find him. “We can’t stop.”
But they did when, in a few more yards, they came to a subway car on the tracks. Graffiti covered the outside, like an obscene mural. The skull symbol, snarling exclamations to KILL! to RAPE THE CUNTS! A drawing of a man with a hugely exaggerated penis dragging a naked woman by the hair.
But worse, far worse, was the stench. Arlys saw the cause through an open door of the car, and the scatter of decomposing bodies.
And the rats.
She dragged Fred away. “It’s too late to pray for their souls.”
This time Fred let out a scream as a figure—Arlys could barely identify it as a man—leaped into the open doorway. Blood stained his face, the thick and filthy beard that stubbled over his chin. He wore smeared glasses over wild eyes, a long coat, painted with gore, that hung on his bony body.
He held a knife, stained like the coat. And grinned.
“This is my place. You can’t have it. These are my dead. You can’t have them. I’ll burn you!”
Arlys raised the gun in a hand that shook, gripped Fred’s arm with the other.
“We don’t want your place. We’re going away.”
“There’s no away! There’s only the end of the world! First the petulance. Then the fire. See?”
He held up a dirty hand with nails that curled like claws. A golf ball of fire burned in it.
“I’m the end of the world!” His laugh, as wild as his eyes, burst out as he flung the ball.
Arlys felt the shocking heat fly past her face, heard the sizzle as it struck the wall behind them.
“There’s no away!” he screamed when Arlys, her hand clamped on Fred’s arm, ran. “There’s only hell.”
Another ball smacked and sizzled on the ground beside her. She kept running. And tripped over something on the tracks.
She went mad for a moment, lost her mind at the stench, at the horrible give of the rotten corpse under her. At the scrabbling rats that ran over her back, over her hands.
“Get them off! Get them off me!”
She rolled, plunged her hand down into what had once been another human being, then shoved herself back on the ground using the heels of her hands and feet.
“They’re all over me!” She flailed, slapping at her own arms, torso, legs, struggling when Fred’s arms came around her.
“You’re okay. They’re not on you. You’re okay.”
Her head spun, and rolling again, she vomited while Fred held back her hair, tried to soothe.
“Oh God, God, God, this can’t be real. How can any of this be real?” Arlys managed to push up to her knees, started to wipe at her face. And, realizing what was coating her hands, gagged as she stripped off her gloves.
She crawled until she felt the wall, sat with her back propped against it. Her heart hammered in her chest, terrible pressure.
“You’re breathing too fast. I think you’re hyperventilating, okay? You have to slow down, Arlys. You really have to.”
She gulped in air—too hard, too fast—felt her head loll, forced herself to expel it. Sucked in more, but slower.
“I can’t lose it. Can’t lose it. Not here. Not now.”
“I should’ve had the light on the ground. It’s my fault.”
“No.” Though her head still spun, the horrible pressure in her chest eased a little. “Nobody’s fault. We have to go, but I dropped the gun. We have to find it. We need it. We have to—”
“I’m going to find it. Stay here. Keep breathing, and I’ll find it.”
Arlys nodded. She’d be useless until she stopped shaking, until her ears stopped ringing. So she closed her eyes, ordered herself to stop thinking, to just breathe in and out.
She heard Fred’s sound of distress, started to push her rocky legs to standing.
“It’s okay. I found it. Just stay there. I can see you. I can see pretty well in the dark, remember? I’ve got the flashlight, too, now. I’d dropped it, but it’s okay.”
She patted Arlys’s cheek as she said the last.
“We can take a break.”
“No.” Arlys shook her head, clenched her teeth, and stood up. She had to brace against the wall a moment with her head and stomach spinning. “We have to keep going. We have to get out of here. I need the gun.”
Carefully, Fred put it into Arlys’s hand.
“I’m covered with…”
“Maybe I can fix it. I can try.”
“We need to get farther away from the crazy man with the fireballs first. I can stand it if you can.”
She put one foot in front of the other. She thought about just ditching her coat—maybe the coat had taken the worst—but she wanted distance first.
“Something’s coming.” Fred barely breathed it in Arlys’s ear. “Something bad.”
She switched off the light and, in the darkness, pulled Arlys along the wall, into one of the narrow depressions.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s bad, what’s coming. It’s magickal and black. I’m using a Sharpie, trying to write the symbols on the wall. Trying to remember the right ones. Don’t talk. Try not to breathe. Don’t move. Pray.”
As they huddled, Arlys saw the light coming. But not a light, she thought. Lights weren’t black.
Yet this was—black yet luminous. And along the top of the tunnel.
Movement now with it, a figure forming.
A man, black hair flowing, black coat spread like wings as he flew along the roof of the tunnel.
A woman lay limp in his arms—arms, legs, head dangling.
Scratches, gouges, even teeth marks scored her naked body.
As he came closer, Arlys saw his eyes burned red.
When he passed, she might have allowed herself a shudder, but he stopped, spun in midair. Hovering, he searched the dark with those red eyes.
The woman in his arms moaned. He smiled down at her.
“Some life in you yet. All the better.”
He flew on until that black light vanished in the dark.
Arlys drew a breath to speak, but Fred put fingers on her lips. They stood in the black, in silence, for another full minute.
“I don’t know how far he can hear or see.”
“What … what was that?”
“I think a sorcerer. I don’t know. Evil. The really evil. She was alive, Arlys. I couldn’t help her. I’m not strong enough.”
