by Jackie May
After retrieving the keys from their hiding spot inside the front fender, it takes me a few tries to get the key into the lock. My hands are trembling from the cold. My breath is a thick white cloud. I drop behind the wheel, elated to hear the chirp of my phone inside the glove box. It’s Hillerman’s link. I click it, then pull on my Tigers jacket and some gloves before stomping the gas, tearing off in a wide fishtail across the freeway. If any of the oncoming traffic is honking at me, I can’t hear them over the roar of the engine. Clutch, shift, gas—I work quickly through the gears, rocketing toward downtown at a hundred and twenty miles per hour.
Hillerman’s tracking link picks up a signal. My phone flashes a blip traveling south on Grand Blvd. Doesn’t make sense to me that the trucks already exited the freeway. Grand Blvd doesn’t lead them through downtown. It takes them to the waterfront.
No time to think about that. I barrel across the freeway just in time to take the next off-ramp. Grand is seven blocks west of here. I gun it, running every red light, cursing at patches of ice that spin my tires and throw my back end all over the road. A chorus of angry honks, shouting, and middle fingers serenades my drag race, but I’ve gained a ton of ground. Fast approaching the intersection with Grand, I see that the blip on the map is only two blocks ahead of me.
As I prepare to launch into a wide sideways drift turning south onto Grande, I see a Harley Davidson motorcycle streak through the intersection, a guy in a tuxedo and no helmet riding it. My heart revs harder than my engine. Cranking the wheel, I hit the gas, spinning the wheels, careening into a wide turn…right in front of a trio of demons on sleek racing motorcycles. They fire at Jay, but luckily, I’ve just thrown myself between them. Bullets riddle my Tiger-Crap, punching holes in the trunk and shattering the back window.
I leap on the brakes, giving no time for them to react. Two of the motorcycles smash into me, their riders flipping up into the air. The third bike whips around me, tearing after Jay. I floor it, and when I close in on the demon, he turns around in his seat to level his gun at me. I duck as bullets thunder into my front end. One obliterates my side mirror. But that guy shouldn’t have taken his eyes off Jay, who slows down beside him and kicks the front end of the bike, sending both machine and rider into a dozen cartwheels. I barely swerve in time to avoid the mess.
It takes us several minutes to catch the trucks. The revenant drivers blow through every intersection at top speed, a couple of freight trains smashing all other vehicles aside. It’s not long before police cruisers have joined the chase, but by then the trucks are chugging up a roundabout that funnels onto the Ambassador Bridge.
A through line clicks in my brain. The Ambassador Bridge. Bringing traffic to and from Windsor, Canada. The Windsor clan master on his way over to a supposed meeting at the Grande Ballroom. This is it. This is the “negotiation” the necromancer promised would be so disagreeable to the Windsor clan. His promised “fireworks.” I recall Pinstripes’ words: We’ve got a thirty-second window to hit…
They’re going to blow up the Ambassador Bridge while the Windsor clan master is on it.
It seems like an absurd plan, even for the big-ass balls of the East Side horde. The chance of getting everything right—the perfect place at the exact time—it’s ridiculous. There’s got to be easier ways to kill somebody. On the other hand, if their goal is to send a message, this will definitely do the trick.
Federal employees scatter for their lives as the trucks plow through customs checkpoints and barge into traffic on the narrow bridge. I’m soon trapped in gridlock, but Jay shoots between lanes on the Harley.
Ditching my Tiger-Crap, I charge ahead on foot, dodging the occasional door thrown open as people begin to panic and leave their cars. “Bomb!” I shout, “Turn around! Stay off the bridge!”
There’s a great commotion of screeching tires and crashing cars as the trucks, now out over open water, suddenly jackknife, blocking all lanes of traffic. Everybody’s bailing out of their cars in a great rush my direction. I leap to the trunk of a car, then the roof, and continue my charge from car to car in what has now become a chaotic parking lot.
Automatic gunfire erupts. The Bowler Hat revenant stands on top of his box trailer and fires down at the space between the trucks. Pinstripes emerges from the truck cab closer to me, gripping a small box trailing a bunch of wires. He attaches the box to the side of the cab, then climbs on top of the trailer, running toward the back.
I have no idea what a bomb looks like, but I have to figure that a box with wires is a pretty damn good candidate. Out of breath and legs burning, I reach the box, searching it all over. I find nothing of interest—no buttons or timers or blinking lights—so I trace the wires back into the cab of the truck. They are connected to a box under the dash with an LCD screen that presents only two options: TIMER or REMOTE. I tap the screen, but that does nothing. I check for buttons or switches. Nothing.
I hear a car door opening, a man coughing. Looking out the passenger window, I see a handful of cars that have been trapped between the two trucks. They’re crushed and shot to hell. The coughing guy is climbing out of an exotic supercar in a nice suit. His eyes glow red, and his fangs grow long as he howls in rage. A Windsor vampire, I take it.
Movement catches my eye in the side mirror. I see Bowler Hat scuffling with Jay at the back end of the other trailer. A scream catches in my throat when Jay tackles him, and they both fall not only off the trailer, but over the side railing of the bridge.
In that moment of frozen horror, a beep startles me. The LCD screen just blinked to life, lighting up the option for REMOTE. I hold my breath, expecting the world to explode.
When it doesn’t, I realize that footsteps are thumping on the trailer above me. I spring into action, hauling myself to the roof of the cab, then vaulting onto the box trailer. Down at the back end, Pinstripes is tightening a harness around his waist. The harness is attached to a rope coiled at his feet.
I rush him. He spins, spotting me. That’s when I see the remote in his hand. I get two more strides before he presses the button and jumps over the side of the bridge.
There’s a muffled pop, then an ear-splitting clap that picks me up off my feet. A wave of fire engulfs me, burning the air in my lungs. The fireball dissipates as quickly as it came, but by then I already know I’ve been thrown from the bridge. I open my eyes to the sight of the Detroit River a hundred and fifty feet below, yawning open to swallow me. After a few long seconds of free fall—during which my heart forgets to beat—I collect my wits just enough to notice Pinstripes also in freefall below me.
His rope goes taut, stretching with the elasticity of a rubber band. A bungie cord, I realize with hope. It slows him down, and I nearly shoot past him before lashing out with my claws, digging into his shoulders, raking down his back. My grip doesn’t stick, but it does create enough drag for me to wrap my legs around his waist. Hanging upside down, I see the river speeding up to meet me.
Grunting with a vertical ab crunch, I pull myself up and hook an arm around his neck, piggyback style. We sweep inches above the water in a great big pendulum swing beneath the bridge. He wrestles against my grip, throwing elbows that knock the wind out of me. I choke him with one arm while searching his pinstripe coat pockets with my free hand. Growling, he bucks back, smashing me in the face with the back of his head. White dots explode in my vision. My grip falters.
On the verge of blacking out, I throw my Hail Mary by unlocking my legs from his waist, which shifts our weight, pulling him backward by the neck. As he flips upside down, my hand snakes inside his coat to his shirt pocket, where my fingers find the thin metallic cylinder of my toothpick. With a flick of my thumb, I expose the ash wood splinter and bury it in his throat. It’s a fatal strike, though it won’t be immediate. He’ll suffocate to death with excruciating spasms.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to maintain my perch by clutching at his head with two fistfuls of hair. I have to pull my feet up to avoid the water as we continue to swi
ng back and forth. A drop into this freezing water would be deadly in minutes. I don’t see how to avoid dropping. I do a pull-up and try to lock my elbows, but human hair doesn’t make for great handholds. It’s slipping through my fingers.
High above me, there’s a terrible sound of groaning metal. Glancing up, I see a worse fate than icy water. Half the box trailer, still flaming from the explosion, teeters on the edge of the bridge railing. The groan of metal is the sound of the trailer folding over the edge, announcing its impending drop, like a kid screaming, “Cannonball!”
And yet, would you believe it, I still have a third option of doom to choose from. The throaty growl of a motor pulls my attention to a speedboat racing straight for me. Bowler Hat grips the wheel with murder in his cataract eyes.
I make my choice, but just before I can release my grip on this guy’s surprisingly strong head of hair, another speedboat T-bones Bowler Hat, sending him skipping away. Jay’s behind this wheel. “Drop in!” he shouts.
I reach out with my foot, but it’s too far. “Closer!” He works the controls, inching closer, but the water’s choppy from the boat’s wake. The bow slips away.
“Dammit!” he barks.
I hear a scraping of metal from the bridge above, followed by a scary silence. I know what Jay is seeing when he looks up, mouth gaping: the box trailer is in freefall. He guns the engine and swings the boat around so the back end slides beneath me. I drop, landing on the engine cover and holding on for dear life, and Jay floors it. The bow shoots up into the air as the propeller spits us away just before the box trailer splats the pinstripe revenant and plunges into the river with an eruption of water.
“He’s running!” Jay shouts over the screaming engine and blasting wind. The other boat has a huge lead on us. “Take the wheel!”
I don’t like being on boats, much less driving them, but it won’t do any good to protest right now. Jay doesn’t see me as me right now. He sees an asset that he can use in his pursuit of a goal. One revenant is killed. The next is getting away. That’s all there is.
On the floor of the boat is an East Side thug, unconscious. The original driver, I assume. When I take the wheel, Jay steals a pistol from the guy’s belt. Then he slaps his face until the guy snaps awake with a start.
“Swim!” Jay orders. The thug balks, but when Jay points the gun at his leg and starts counting, the guy throws himself into the river.
I happily turn the wheel over to Jay. He guns the throttle, and we bounce from wave to wave; wind whips my hair; sprays of ice water sting my face. Jay is impervious to it all, eyes locked on the other speedboat, too far ahead. We’ll never catch him.
Jay’s tuxedo coat is shredded, hanging from his arms. I help him untangle it from one arm, then the other. His dress shirt is spotted with blood in several places. I don’t ask if he’s all right, because I know that information is irrelevant at the moment. All he’s thinking about is what to do next. How to win.
I see police sirens ahead—Detroit’s river cops in their black-and-white police boats. Officers wave neon batons, directing all boat traffic off the river, away from the burning Ambassador Bridge. One police boat guides a massive freighter into dock at a shipyard. The sight jolts me with a sudden insight. Like most revelations, it seems very simple—even obvious—in hindsight, but in the moment of breakthrough, I can hardly keep up with the race of my thoughts, each one reaching further back into memory and logic.
Gripping wet upholstery with my claws, I fight against the turbulence, climbing into a position at Jay’s shoulder. I scream over the chaos into his ear. “Jay, this isn’t it! The bridge wasn’t the thing!”
I don’t think he hears me. He shows no sign of acknowledgment.
I keep at it. “All this—the bombs, the bridge—it wasn’t just an answer to the Windsor clan. It was a trigger! To force all the boats on the river to have to dock.” When he still doesn’t respond, I grip his elbow. “Jay, they’re going after Arael! They’re going to kill him.” At last, his hand falters on the throttle, and he looks at me with grave comprehension. “The underworld prison is one of these giant cargo ships, and it was headed this way. Hillerman told me it was coming upriver. Erie freezes over, so they have to winter on Lake Huron. That would bring them straight through here.”
I’m just about to say that I don’t know if I can recognize the cargo ship, but just then a bright explosion rises from an upcoming shipyard. Docked there is the Seawaymax bulk carrier, with its three domes the size of football fields. The five-story control tower is on fire.
“But I thought all this was top secret,” Jay says. “You didn’t even know about it until she took you there. How did they know about it? Are you telling me this is an inside job? Somebody at the Agency?”
The answer is obvious to me. “No. Hillerman was double-crossed. It’s Theo Coltrane, master of the Cleveland clan. Everything fits. The East Side horde needs a replacement for Henry Stadther, and Coltrane has access to Arael. Coltrane wants the Detroit territory, but so does his only remaining rival, Windsor, which is bigger and closer.”
Jay gets it. “So they decide to scratch each other’s backs. The bridge was two birds with one stone. Strike at Windsor, while also forcing the cargo ship to dock.”
“Jay, if they get to Arael…if they kill him, we’ve lost. They’ll find him a new body, and there’ll be no stopping them from taking over Detroit.”
When Bowler Hat’s speedboat cuts sharply, heading toward a marina, Jay freezes with indecision. He can either chase after the revenant or continue on to the cargo ship—we can’t do both. I feel bad. I know how much Jay wants to nail that bastard. I’m the one who set him free, told him to go fetch, to put me out of his thoughts, and yet here I am trying to pull him back, to force him another way.
I put my hand on his arm. “Jay. Arael’s a warmonger. He’ll destroy the city.”
He eases off the throttle, watching the speedboat. There’s still time to go after it. Honestly, I won’t push back if Jay makes that choice. In fact, I’ll be relieved. It’s by far the safer choice, and I could still reassure myself that I tried to do the right thing.
Jay sides with me. Throttling up, he takes us straight for the bulk carrier. We’re close enough now to see the muzzle flashes of automatic gunfire from the tower and on deck. It’s a war zone.
My head cranes back as we approach. I had no idea how high these things float above the waterline. The hull is a sixty-foot wall of smooth steel.
“How the hell do we get up there?”
Jay points ahead. Toward the back of the ship, I can barely make out a thin line running straight up from the water to the deck. When we finally reach it, I see that the thin line is a series of metal rungs.
Jay scrapes our boat along the mammoth hull, and then, without hesitation, jumps onto the rungs and begins climbing. I scramble to follow him, but the rocking boat makes me lose my balance. With an awkward leap, I barely manage to make the transfer. When this is over, I’ll be happy to never step foot on another boat.
We climb and climb, and the higher we go, the more this wall seems to tip back at an inverted angle. I feel like I’m trying to climb across a ceiling. We’re almost to the top when another explosion from the tower shakes the whole world. I cling to the rungs, gritting my teeth against the sting of frozen steel against my cheek.
At last, I pull myself over the lip of the deck and throw myself down next to Jay beside a series of enormous pipes. On the other side of the ship, next to the dock, a battle rages between the FBI’s Underworld Task Force and the alliance of East Side demons and Cleveland vampires. The agents have guns, but the enemy outnumbers them 3 to 1, and the vamps are fast, spreading out into flanking positions. The FBI will be overrun.
Jay checks his pistol, makes sure it’s loaded. “We’ve got to move Arael. Where’ve they got him?”
“First cargo hold. There’s a hatch in the control room across from the cafeteria.”
Jay moves out, running in a crouch,
keeping his head down. I’m slow to follow. Everything’s happening so fast. My arms and legs are rubber from the ladder climb. My body shivers uncontrollably, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the cold, or the shock of my plunge from the bridge finally settling in. Closing my eyes, I suck in a breath and blow it out, trying to steady my racing heart.
I pick myself up and stumble after Jay, but I only get a handful of steps before I’m stopped by a terrible sight: Agent Hillerman is taking cover behind the corner of a cargo hold roof, and at her feet Russo lies flat on his back, clutching at his chest. He’s covered in blood. Hillerman fires at a group of demons, keeping them back, but she doesn’t see the tall thug sneaking up behind her.
I don’t stop to think. I sprint on pure adrenaline. The thug makes his move, lunging at Hillerman, but I intercept him at the last moment, throwing my shoulder into his chest. Crack! His head slams against the cargo bay, and he drops like a rag doll.
“Watch it!” Hillerman shouts, spinning to fire past my shoulder. I see a streak of movement, too fast to be human. The vampire both crashes into me and lifts me up into the air at the same time. We slam down on top of the cargo hold, and as he wrestles against my flailing limbs, I catch glimpses of Capra’s golden boy hair and leather jacket with popped collar. His supernaturally strong grip pins my arms. I have time to register the horrifying sight of his chin with the black stripe running down it before the revenant opens his mouth wide and buries his fangs in my neck, growling with satisfaction. The deep puncture seizes my nervous system, making my whole body go stiff as a board.
It’s over so quickly. I’m still opening my mouth to scream when he tears his mouth from my throat and shoves off from me, gone in a flash. My mouth hangs open, but no sound comes out.
There’s no pain. Not yet. There’s only a heavy and overwhelming dread, a realization that we can’t win this time. There’s too many of them, too many leaks in the dam—not enough fingers to plug the holes. Hillerman is retreating, Russo is badly injured, maybe dying, and Jay is going down into the cargo hold alone, where he’ll be trapped.
