by E. A. Copen
Khaleda sucked in a shaky breath. “I’m free of my father. He’s dead. He’s never going to hurt me again.”
I smiled. “There’s my girl. What’ll you do to any asshole who tries to hurt you from now on?”
In a blur of motion, Khaleda pushed my hands away, grabbed one of my arms, and twisted me, raising the arm at a painful angle behind my back.
“Christ! I didn’t mean me, Khaleda!”
She let me go, and I almost fell flat on my face. “Prick.”
That was it. After everything, that was how she was going to be? Oh, it was on. I rolled my shoulder and turned around to find her smiling at me like it was all a big joke. But the sparkle was back in her eyes, which made it hard to stay mad at her, despite the sore arm.
“Bitch.” I said it with a smile and a wink before crawling through the next opening.
The maintenance hatch opened onto a narrow ledge that stretched a quarter-mile to the next station. It was empty except for a collection of bums huddled under sleeping bags in one corner of the station. A flashing sign announced the last train of the evening would be arriving in two minutes. We had great timing.
Our luck held, and we got onto a car that was eerily empty. Just to be safe, we found a seat in the corner where she could keep her bloody shoulder mostly hidden. It felt good to sit, even if it was on the most uncomfortable metro seats ever.
“How’s the shoulder?” I asked as the train screamed through a tunnel.
“Aches.” Khaleda shut her eyes and swayed. She had to be exhausted. “Bullet’s still in there.”
“We’ll get it out once we get where we’re goin’,” I promised.
She yawned. “Which is where exactly?”
We couldn’t go back to the hotel. Not only did Danny know where that was, but God’s Hand would be getting desperate soon. They’d assume I’d accepted Danny’s offer and come to kill us as soon as they knew we were back. It wouldn’t be long before they spotted us on the metro either, but that couldn’t be helped. I’d lose them once we got off the train.
I spread my arms over the back of both seats and leaned back. “I don’t have many contacts here, but I do know someone. He won’t be happy to see us. Once we explain things though, he’ll help. His place isn’t the Hilton, but might be able to get a little rest before we have to go save the city again.”
Khaleda leaned to the side. I thought she was falling until her head landed against my shoulder. I froze, muscles still coiled tight from the urge to jump up and catch her. Was it an accident? She was normally as cuddly as a croc, with fierce teeth to match. But she scooted closer, pressing her body against mine.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“What for?”
“For not dying back there. For not leaving me when I told you to. For making me live.”
“No worries there, Khaleda. You just get some rest, yeah?” I leaned my head back and sighed. I’d never figure that woman out.
Chapter Twenty-One
JOSIAH
Legend has it that in November of 1948, a subway station opened up just over the border between Brooklyn and Queens. The line supposedly ran along Pennsylvania and Pitkin Avenues to 76th Street. As the story went, there were all kinds of problems with the line’s construction due to shortages during the Second World War. Parts of it were completed under dubious management by non-union employees who’d done sub-par work. Some rumors claimed the line was unfinished or unsafe, depending on who you talked to. This, of course, led to significant controversy and the station was shut down after just a month of operation. A concrete wall sealed the 76th Street Station and the connecting lines in an underground tomb, forgotten by all but the most intrepid urban explorers.
Explorers like my old friend, Reggie Wold.
Access to the mythical station was difficult, to say the least. We got off the A-line at the Shepherd Avenue station and followed the tracks into the darkness, due east until we came to a bit of tile wall on the left. There, hidden behind an illusion spell, was a maintenance door.
The tunnel inside was hot, cramped, and completely dark, yet we found our way. I walked along, holding the third pipe down from the ceiling, the only cool one of the bunch, and clutching Khaleda’s hand, guiding her along behind me. An old security door marked the other end of the maintenance tunnel, the latch broken long ago. I fumbled to find the handle.
The door creaked open on a grimy concrete platform. Rusty old tracks trailed off into darkness to the right. Blue light emanated from the other end of the platform where a wall of computer monitors bathed a lumpy humanoid form in light. Stubby fingers worked their way over a keyboard at a breakneck pace, pausing only to pick up a soda can and pop the tab on it.
Keys stopped clacking when I took a step forward. The chair spun around. “No!” growled the gray-skinned man sitting in the chair. His oversized nostrils flared, and he pushed greasy black hair away from beady eyes. “No, no, no! Not you! Get out, Josiah! Get. OUT!”
Khaleda braced for an attack as Reggie stood to tower over us. “I thought you said he was a friend.”
“Friend is such a loose term.” I raised my hands. “Easy, Reggie. This is an offer you’ll want to hear.”
“Oh, right. Like that time you offered me a bag of gold for my magic die? That gold turned to lead, by the way. I knew I should’ve checked it.”
I shrugged. “It was gold when the last guy gave it to me. I swear, Reggie! Besides, that’s not worthless to you, is it? You can still trade lead.”
He grimaced, showing yellow teeth. “Or how about that time you gave me that talking plant?”
“What’s wrong with the plant?”
“It bit me!” Reggie’s fists became boulders. Literally. “I still have the rash! So, no, I won’t be hearing you out this time. Get. The hell. OUT!”
“Fine,” I said, taking a step back. “But before I go, you should know that if you don’t help us, everyone in New York will be dead by noon tomorrow.”
Reggie blinked and halted his advance. He released his fists and glanced at Khaleda once before turning back to me, his face hardening. “What did you do, Josiah?”
Reggie made us tea while I summarized everything that’d happened so far and helped Khaleda to the bed he had tucked into a corner of the platform. It stood behind a set of heavy blackout drapes on a metal frame. Simple, but homey.
After he put the tea on the overturned crate that served a nightstand, he went to retrieve one of the medical kits he kept on hand. Reggie wasn’t much to look at, but in a pinch, he was a good friend to have. Hoarders always are.
He placed the medical kit next to the untouched tea. “So, what do you want me to do? I mean, besides be your safe harbor and probably die when you fail.”
I opened the medical kit and eyed what he’d brought me. Reggie bumped my arm with a jug of sterile water. I took it and did a quick wash before pulling on the blue surgical gloves. “You’re tapped into the city’s mainframe, right, Reggie?”
“I can control every stoplight in the city and about ninety percent of the power grid from here to Hoboken, as well as some other odds and ends.” Reggie crossed his arms. “Why?”
“Need you to find a way to cancel the parade tomorrow, mate.”
“The Macy’s Parade?” He uncrossed his arms and shook his head. “I don’t think I can. I can’t exactly hack a parade, Josiah.”
“Then I’m going to need a map of the route. I also need that big brain of yours to help me figure out what he’s using as the catalyst for the spell. It’d have to be something every New Yorker has, something that creates a sealed circle over a five-mile radius. Could be he had some cables laid. Rail lines.” I picked up the scalpel and looked to Khaleda. “You ready?”
Her eyebrows knitted together. “Are you sure you know how to do this, Josiah? These aren’t the most sterile conditions, you know.”
“Won’t be the first bullet I dug out of someone while sitting in an abandoned subway tunnel.” I pushed on th
e swollen lump in her arm, under which the bullet was probably resting in fragments.
She pulled away with a curse. “That hurts, asshole!”
“Just proving I know where it is. One quick cut, a little digging and a quick check from Reggie here and we’ll get all the pieces out.”
Khaleda looked at Reggie, questioning.
He shrugged. “All trolls have an element they’re attuned to. Mine happens to be lead. I can find it anywhere. He might be an asshole, and a con man, but he wouldn’t let another woman suffer under the knife.”
I hesitated, the flash of memory biting at the back of my brain with his words. Dark hair in a sweaty halo. Pained whimpers, growing weaker by the second. Insides splayed out all over the pillowtop mattress like a dissected animal. Blood everywhere. Evette.
I blinked, and she was gone, but the tightness of loss in my chest remained.
I leaned in toward Khaleda, resting the scalpel gently against the swollen lump. “You’re in my light, Reggie. Go make yourself useful and get that map, yeah?”
“Fuck you, Josiah,” the troll spat and stomped off.
Pulling out a bullet wasn’t easy. Damn things tended to fracture on impact, even in soft tissue. This one had gone in at a lucky angle, missing bone and staying shallow enough the largest part was easily accessible. All the tissue around it was angry and inflamed. A small bit of fluid encased it under the skin, making it easy enough to identify. The big piece came out in a matter of minutes, but I spied two more small pieces while I was in there.
Khaleda whimpered as I dabbed up some of the blood.
“You doing okay? Need a break?” I asked.
She bit her lip and shook her head. “Just get it out.”
“As you wish.”
I had the second one out inside fifteen minutes, but the third piece was a bleeder. Every time I nudged it, I had to stop and mop up the mess just to see what I was doing. All the while, I ignored the tears streaming down Khaleda’s face. Reggie came back to offer painkillers a second time, but she refused them like the stubborn woman she was.
After the third piece came out, Reggie sniffed the wound and declared it lead-free. I washed it out with a bit of saline, put in three stitches, and smeared the whole thing with antibiotic ointment. It wasn’t ideal, and the likelihood it’d get infected was still higher than normal given the conditions, but it was the best I could do.
“Who was she?” Khaleda asked as I started wrapping gauze around her shoulder.
“Who was who?”
“The woman Reggie mentioned. He said you’d never let another woman suffer again. I assume that means someone did before. Was it in this cult you and Danny were part of?”
I considered not telling her. What business was it of hers, anyway? If we survived this, she’d get her papers from God’s Hand, and we’d go our separate ways. Then again, she’d taken a bullet for me. She’d killed to save me, and she’d lost a small part of herself when Victis died. I owed her more than I could repay. A name and a story wouldn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve the pain.
I rolled the gauze over her arm one more time. “Her name was Evette. She, Danny, and I were at the top of the class. Best of the best of Christian’s soldiers. Inseparable, the three of us. But there could only be one successor to Christian’s madness. After Danny was exiled, I…” The words caught in my throat as I touched the scar of a memory I’d sealed away long ago. “Christian murdered her. Used her pain and suffering to gain power. Power he then offered to me. I rejected it, and then I burned him and the rest of his cultists alive.”
“Holy shit. Josiah, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head and forced myself to smile. “It’s in the past. Everyone has regrets. If this mess proves anything, it’s that you can’t run from that. The past always catches you, no matter how fast and how far you try to fly away from it. It’s not something you escape. It’s always there, in the mirror, staring back at you. How d’ya think I got this ugly? Wasn’t for trying.”
She lifted her other hand, reaching as if to touch me.
I pushed away from the bed and out of reach, pulling off my gloves. “Now, if you don’t mind, I had part of a building fall on me. I’d really like a lie down about now.”
Khaleda blinked as if she’d just come out of a trance. “Oh, right,” she said, pushing off the bed. “I’ll help Reggie get that information you wanted, I guess. And listen to the weather report. I heard they were talking about canceling the parade tomorrow because of the weather. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the snow will hold.”
I almost laughed at her hopeful optimism. “Right, and maybe snakes will sprout legs.”
“Josiah? Thank you.”
I nodded without looking at her.
She waited a moment, as if she were expecting me to say something else, then rose and stepped through the curtains.
I spent about thirty more seconds tidying up before I lost patience with it and eased onto the bed. The thin mattress felt like heaven on my aching body, lulling me toward sleep.
Can’t sleep yet, Josiah. I rolled onto my back with a groan and a muffled hiss of pain as my rib reminded me it was there. All work and no play makes for a bad day. Christ, I hope the next place I visit is tropical. I’m thinking nude beach. Tahiti sounds nice.
The clock ticking on the wall stopped.
“Tahiti, Josiah? Really?”
My eyes snapped open and I shot up. The voice had come from the foot of the bed where a skinny, dark-skinned creature with no discernable gender stood. A squiggly shock of blue hair twisted like the top of an ice cream cone on their forehead. Sparkles dusted their cheeks, forehead, and the exposed skin of their upper arms. Feathery, gray wings folded behind their back.
“Ira.” The name escaped my mouth like a curse. It’d been some time since I’d had a heart-to-heart with my guardian angel. Most of the time, Heaven didn’t want anything to do with me, but they’d been unusually interested of late.
The angel’s eyes glowed blue briefly. Wings twitched. “It’s Irabriel. You know I prefer the long form.”
“And I prefer to be left alone.” I collapsed flat on my back again. “Go away.”
“That’s it? I save you from certain death in a collapsing building, and this is the thanks I get? A collapse you caused, Josiah.”
“Not on purpose.” I closed my eyes, shifted my leg, and winced at the pain. Something there was definitely off.
Ira appeared standing over me, arms crossed over their flat chest. “Three people died in that collapse. One of them was an old woman who had nothing to do with your fight with Daniel Monahan.”
“Old lady, you say? Old enough to have had a good life then.” I cracked open an eye. “Why’re you here, Ira?”
Ira frowned down at me. The blue sheen passed over Ira’s eyes. “You have a bruised femur, which is why your leg hurts so bad. Painful, but not fatal. It’s the cracked rib I’m worried about. You keep going at the rate you’re going—and we both know you will—and it’ll snap. It will pierce your lung. Thanks to your smoking habit, it’ll kill you in short order.”
I put a hand over the aching spot on my rib. It throbbed painfully in response. “I can’t just lie here until it knits itself back together. Your side hired me to stop Danny from wrecking New York, remember?”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
Ah, so someone higher up than Decimus had taken note of what was happening and wanted to put a stop to it. It’d have to be someone with lots of clout if they were ordering Ira about.
Ira smiled, a warm, loving smile. “Brace yourself.”
I tried to move out of the way, but even I wasn’t faster than an angel. Ira thrust their hands into my chest as if the skin and bone weren’t there. Hot fingers brushed against my insides, singeing them, burning them to ash. I choked on the agony and gritted my teeth as Ira traced burning fingers over bone and muscle, feeling for the crack.
“Stay with me, Josiah,” Ira urged, a smile evident in the ton
e. “This is no fun if you pass out from the pain.”
Get fucked, you winged cunt. I couldn’t say it out loud, but I didn’t have to. One of Ira’s gifts was the ability to read minds. All I had to do was think it.
Just when I thought I was adjusting, Ira’s fingers probed an even more sensitive spot. “There you are.”
I kicked on instinct, my primitive nervous system working on overdrive to try and propel me away from the unbearable, searing pain as Ira mended my bones. My lungs seized, refusing to draw in air. Tears touched the corners of my eyes, and I choked on a scream.
When Ira had finished with my ribs, they moved on to correcting the bruise on my femur.
“I thought you said that wasn’t fatal,” I ground out through clenched teeth.
Ira smiled. “It’s not. I just like watching you suffer. You know, you’re lucky I’m doing this at all. There’s still a standing kill order. If I didn’t like your father so much, I’d have ripped your heart and brought it upstairs instead. Gift wrapped. Let me take care of your head, too.”
There were only so many ways to describe pain, and I was all out, but Ira wasn’t. Ira had a whole language based on pain and made sure to teach it to me.
When Ira was done, they withdrew their hand and shook it. “There. All done. Don’t you feel better?”
I couldn’t respond. Everything ached. My insides felt like they’d been put through a blender and funneled back in where they were set on fire. My skin felt chilled, though I knew it had to be stuffy and warm as far down as we were.
“Your magic will return within the hour. Your father sends his regards, by the way.” Ira toweled blood from their hands. “Said his offer is still open.”
I fought the exhaustion to raise two middle fingers.
Ira sighed. “I told him you’d say that. I also told him he’d do good to visit your mother. Is she still in that private hospital in Melbourne?”
“If he goes near her, I will flay him living. Understand me?”
“Temper, temper.” Ira patted my chest. “All that smoking’s got your blood pressure up. I’d give it up if I were you. You know that leads to performance issues. Wouldn’t want your little succubus friend to be disappointed.”
