"You expect me to take criticism from a
monkey?
Wai-Sun was useless. He might as well have thrown open a window and shouted for her, for all the good he did. No, to find her I need someone with a
connection
to the girl – which, for the record, is the only reason you're still standing."
"If you think I'm going to deliver her to you, you're out of your fucking mind."
I didn't even see him move. One moment, he was standing half a room away. The next, his hand was on my throat. His eyes met mine, and I was plunged into darkness so complete, for a moment, I thought I'd ceased to be. Then he threw me across the room, and the darkness lifted.
I crashed into a stack of half-assembled wooden chairs. He was on me in a flash. He yanked me from the rubble by my arm. Something in my shoulder snapped. "I think with the proper encouragement, Collector, you'll tell me everything I need to know." He let me go, and I tumbled to the floor. Then he kicked me so hard my vision went dim and my mouth filled with the copper tang of blood.
The kick lifted me up off the floor and sent me sailing across the room. I slammed into a bank of shelves and crumpled to the floor, the shelves crashing to the ground atop me. Pain blossomed in my head and in my chest – exquisite, clarifying – and the world snapped back into focus. I clambered to my feet, shrugging aside the splintered wood and shards of glass that used to be the contents of the shelves.
I flashed him a half-crazed smile of defiance. "So tell me, demon, do you have a name?"
Again he struck. Just a momentary blur, and then darkness enveloped me, and I saw nothing. Great claws dug into my chest and I was lifted skyward, slamming into the ceiling before falling back to the floor, the storeroom rubble scratching and piercing my skin. I coughed and tasted blood.
"Are you the one who did this to her? Killed her family, set her up?"
The blow came from behind this time. It was like a fucking bus. I ricocheted off the workbench and smacked head-first into the wall before tumbling to the floor. A close one, I thought – if I hadn't gotten my arms up in time, that woulda been curtains for this meat-suit. Two in two days – it might have been some kind of record.
Then again, if I had died, I would have missed out on all this fun.
"You can make all of this stop, you know," the demon said to me. "Just help me find the girl, and I've no further quarrel with you. I promise I'll dispatch this vessel of yours quickly and you'll be free to go about your wasted, scavenging existence."
"That's a lovely offer, really." I lay prostrate on the floor, and drew breath in ragged, hitching gasps. "And after careful consideration, I've decided you can go fuck yourself."
The gap between us disappeared. A hand, cold and unyielding as marble, closed around my neck. My ears filled with the sickening noise of my own strangled gurgles; my legs pistoned in the rubble. I was running out of time.
"Wait!" I squeaked, and the grip slackened, just a shade. "Wait. I'll help you find her." The demon released my neck, instead grabbing me by the collar and dragging me out into the front room. He dropped me to the floor, and, once again Wai-Sun, wiped blood – my blood – from his hand onto the wooden top, smearing the rest onto the map.
"You have made a prudent choice, Collector. Once I have the girl in hand, you have my oath that I shall kill you quickly."
I nodded, and spat blood onto the painted concrete floor.
"Now – clear your thoughts. Think of nothing but the girl. If you attempt to deceive the map, I will find out, and when I do, your suffering to date will be nothing compared to what you have in store. Are we clear?"
"Clear," I rasped.
The false Wai-Sun closed his eyes. I didn't. Instead I watched him as he descended into trance, my grip tightening around the dagger I'd snatched up off the floor of the storeroom. It was an odd little thing – pure silver by the look of it, with an ornate filigreed handle and a series of characters etched along the blade, in what to my eyes looked like Aramaic. I didn't know for sure if it could hurt a demon, but Wai-Sun's talents were acknowledged by Merihem and this creature both – the way I figured it, this was the only shot I had. All I could think was I'd better not miss.
The demon began to hum – a low, atonal, guttural tone, which was soon accompanied by a second higher one, and then one higher still. The top righted of its own accord and began to spin. At first, it skittered wildly around the table, and then it settled into an elliptical orbit. I tried to force any thought of Kate from my mind, which was about as useful as, I don't know, something not so useful. The top's orbit began to decay – it spun in ever smaller ovals, until it had centered on an area of maybe six by nine blocks. At least she was still somewhere on the island, I thought, but this had gone on long enough – any longer, and I'd be giving up the farm.
I dove toward the false Wai-Sun, drawing the dagger high overhead and plunging it deep into his chest. His eyes snapped open, and he staggered backward. The humming ceased, and the top skittered off the desktop and across the floor. The demon's eyes registered shock and surprise; he backed into a cherry end table and stumbled. His mouth opened, and closed, and opened again, emitting a dry, whistling rasp that built upon itself like waves capping against the shore. Tears sprung up in his eyes and spilled down his face. Soon his whole body was shaking, and he doubled over, bracing himself against the corner of the desk.
The demon, I realized, was laughing.
He said, "You fool. Did you really think that pitiful blade would hurt me? I'm a fucking
demon
. But don't worry – that's one mistake you won't have long to regret."
He approached, slowly this time, as if savoring the moment. I backed away. My hip connected with a mahogany buffet, and I tried too late to scramble over it. He backhanded me, and I sailed across the room, toppling a pile of furniture and sending a half-dozen vases shattering to the floor.
I made for the front door of the shop, but my way was blocked. The demon just smiled. I clawed at the mound of junk that barred my path, tossing anything and everything toward my assailant in a desperate attempt to slow him down long enough to make my escape. I bounced a pearl inlay music box off his temple, but it left no mark, and he just laughed – that horrible, wheezing laugh, like dry leaves on pavement. I heaved a wooden chest to the floor between us, but he simply gestured, and it moved aside. It was clear he was enjoying this.
I flung myself atop the pile as the demon closed the gap. As I clawed my way to the summit, he grabbed my leg in an iron grip. I kicked at him with my free leg, connecting with his jaw. It was like kicking a fucking tree. But daylight was so close, the shop door just a few feet beyond the mound of junk I lay atop – surely he wouldn't chase me into a crowded street?
I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that question, but still, I had to try.
Despite my efforts, he dragged me backward, daylight dwindling to nothing as I slid backward down the pile, loosing a small avalanche of timeworn junk. I grabbed whatever I could and winged it at him – a wind-up clock emblazoned with Mao's wizened face, a cane in the shape of a serpent – but still backward I slid. As he dragged me down to face him, my hands closed on a small ceramic Lucky Cat, the kind you'd find in Asian restaurants the world over, this one chipped and faded and ugly. But I was too late: his eyes, black as starless night, bored into my own, until nothing left of me remained, it seemed. His brittle cackle filled my head as I tumbled toward oblivion. In one last frantic act of rebellion, I brought the cat down hard onto his face. The way I figured it, if I was going down, I was going down swinging.
Something happened then, or rather several somethings, in such rapid succession it's not clear just what happened when. The darkness lifted, and consciousness returned, streaming in pure and true like first morning light. The demon released his grip, and I fell limp to the floor at his feet. A horrible, piercing shriek filled the air, rattling windows in their casements and setting off car alarms for a dozen blocks around. And, as I watched him stagger backward, the demon grew pale, indistinct – his insubstantial hands clawing helplessly at his torn and shattered face, the sharp edges of the broken figurine slicing through his flesh like so much Jell-O.
I skittered backward on the floor away from him, pure animal instinct urging me to flee. The demon fell to his knees, and then toppled to the floor – now charred black beneath him as if from fire, though just feet away, I felt no warmth. The shriek died to a whimper, and then fell silent. A voice – no longer connected to the transparent waif of a body that lay before me, but instead comprised of the myriad creaks and roars and scratches and whispers of the buildings and traffic and scuffing shoes and whooshing fabric that surrounded me as I lay on the floor of the dead Wai-Sun's store – called to me, full of hatred and menace and fear:
You have no idea what you've just done. You've sealed your fate, and the girl's as well. You cannot kill us all, Collector, for we are Legion – and you cannot keep her from us forever. My brethren shall dine on the tender flesh of her soul.
Then the body before me burst – thousands of horrid, nameless, mewling things pouring forth from it and scattering to all corners of the store, disappearing into the murk. After a moment, their unnatural squeaking had ceased, but still my skin crawled from the sight of them, and my teeth were set on edge. I pushed aside furniture, sure they were still there – watching, waiting – but whatever they were, they were gone now.
I didn't have a fucking clue what had just gone down, but of one thing I was sure: whatever just happened, I was suddenly alone.
14.
The morning sun ducked behind a passing cloud, and I wrapped my arms tight around my chest to defend against the sudden chill. The signal changed, and I stepped out into the street, the ceramic shards in my pocket jangling as I hit the crosswalk on Morton, headed northwest toward Seventh Avenue on Bleecker Street. Since I left Wai-Sun's, I'd been wandering for hours, taking refuge in the quiet chaos of the Village. A far cry from the rigid grid of streets and avenues that traversed the rest of Manhattan, the tangled streets of Greenwich Village seemed as good a place as any to get lost – which was fine by me, since beaten and bloodied as I was, the last thing I needed was to be found.
I still wasn't sure just what in the hell happened back there, but one thing was certain – I was lucky I'd gotten out of Wai-Sun's alive. After I'd dispatched the false Wai-Sun, I'd collected up the shattered remains of the ceramic cat and stuffed them in my pocket. I'm not sure what kind of mojo that cat had, or whether it would work again, but I figured it couldn't hurt. Of all the things the demon had told me, at least one of them was true:
Mystical objects need not be as elaborate as one might think.
After sweeping up the remains of the cat, I'd drawn the blinds, flipped the sign to Closed, and gotten the hell out of there, locking the door behind me. It was only a matter of time before Wai-Sun was found, but I wanted to be well away from there when he was. Besides, the longer it took for word to spread I'd killed a member of the Fallen, the better. The last thing I needed now was a pack of demons with a vendetta on my tail.
Once I'd left Wai-Sun's, I set out walking toward the neighborhood the top had circled in its last lazy arcs before skittering off the table and across the room. Of course, the top had only narrowed it down to an area of maybe fifty blocks, and it wasn't like I could just go around knocking on doors. Policeman-suit or not, that was liable to arouse exactly the sort of suspicions I could really do without. Still, the top was all I had, and one way or another, I simply had to track Kate down.
Fun as all that sounded, though, it was gonna have to wait. Right now, I had to deal with whatever it was that was following me.
I'd first spotted him last night on the way to my meeting with Merihem – a dirt-streaked kid in a jacket a few sizes too big, sitting at a busy corner and begging for change. I wouldn't have given him another thought, except I spotted his reflection in the window of a Korean take-out joint earlier this morning, and then again a couple minutes ago, when he got chased off from a news stand a half a block ahead of me for loitering. The kid didn't look to be more than eleven, and he was thin as a rail, but I didn't let that fool me – plenty of demons like to take a spin in the little ones, and tiny frames or not, demonic strength is all the same.
I lagged back a while to make sure he caught sight of me, and then ducked into a narrow service alley beside a dingy neighborhood pub. The stained brick walls were a scant three feet apart, blotting out the morning light, and the alley smelled of rotting garbage and piss. I held my breath and soldiered on.
The alley intersected with a haphazard courtyard, just a couple of picnic tables and a pair of withered birch trees overlooked by three buildings' worth of windows; the rear of the bar and the dry cleaner's next door made up the windowless fourth wall, bisected by the alley I'd just cut through. Clotheslines criss-crossed the sky above.
Yeah, I thought – this'll do fine.
Other than the alley, the only way out of the courtyard was through one of the three buildings. I checked the doors – two were locked, but the third was propped open with a dented Folgers can, filled with sand and littered with cigarette butts. I glanced back the way I came. There was no sign yet of my pursuer. Good – that meant I still had time. I dragged one of the picnic tables over to the far wall, and climbed atop it. After a minute or two of wild, flailing leaps, I managed to snag the fire escape ladder. It extended downward, rattling like a rusty chain, and then slammed into the tabletop with a satisfying
thunk
.