Authors: George Mann
Vettel switched the slides, offering Donovan a view from the reverse. She pointed to Harness’s wrist. “Here,” she said. “We missed it the first time, for the same reason we missed the one on Fuseli—it’s crude, and it’s been done in a hurry. The hallmarks are all there, though. It’s the same killer, or killers.”
“Any more?” said Donovan. He could see where this was going.
“Another five that all fit the same pattern, in one way or another. They all died within the last month. You want to see?”
“No, that’s enough. But I do have another question. Have you had anyone in from a recent fire, probably on the Upper East Side? It’ll be within the same time period, possibly more recent. It might not have been a criminal investigation, but I’m looking at a number of victims.”
She shook her head. “No, sorry, nothing.”
“All right, thanks.” He’d have to get Mullins to check with the fire department.
“What do you think we’re looking at?” said Vettel.
“Gang war on a scale we haven’t seen for years,” said Donovan. “The cult who did this,” he jabbed at the flickering hologram, “they’re known as the Circle of Thoth, and they’re going up against the Reaper. I thought it all started with Autumn Allen, but I was wrong. What you’ve shown me today proves that it’s already out of hand. If we don’t put it down quickly, we’re going to see all of Manhattan caught in the crossfire.” He scratched at his beard. “And what’s more—I think the Circle of Thoth have just brought in a LOT of reinforcements.”
“What can I do?” said Vettel.
“You know what we’re looking for,” said Donovan, “so keep your eyes peeled. Anything comes in that looks like it’s connected, call me.”
“Of course,” said Vettel.
“Listen, I’ve got to run. I need to make a call. Thank you,” said Donovan. He didn’t wait for her response before running out of the door.
* * *
“I’m sorry, Inspector, but Mr. Cross is away in the city at the moment. I’m not sure precisely when he’ll be back, but I’m not expecting him any time soon. Would you like me to take a message?”
“No, thank you. Maybe when you speak to him just let him know that I called.”
“Certainly, sir. Goodbye.”
Donovan hung up the receiver on Gabriel’s valet, and cursed. He’d already tried the apartment, first on the holotube, and then in person, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Donovan was half concerned that his injured body had finally given up on him someplace in town, and that he’d turn up in a hospital somewhere, too broken to be any help.
That, though, was just his frustration talking. More likely he was out visiting an ally, trying to find out more about the cultists and what they were up to, or chasing down Landsworth in search of Ginny.
Whatever the case, Donovan needed to talk to him, and soon. Things were about to spiral out of control. He could see it coming. If the Reaper sent his Enforcers up against whatever godforsaken voodoo the cult had just shipped in from Egypt, then all hell would break loose. There was no way the police department was equipped to handle the fallout.
He needed the Ghost, and he needed him
now
.
It was a balmy night, and the Ghost, drifting high above the rooftops of Fifth Avenue, wished he were at home, sipping a margarita and listening to a lazy jazz record on the Victrola. He needed to rest, to find a moment of respite. If Ginny were there she would have forced the issue, regardless of everything else going on—she’d have whisked him back to Long Island, and they’d have spent the night together, sitting on the veranda and looking up at the stars.
Only Ginny wasn’t there, and that was why he couldn’t stop.
He felt as if he were caught in an endless cycle of days and nights, Gabriel and the Ghost, unable to halt his progress as he careened into whatever was coming next. He risked losing perspective; he knew that. There was no time, though—he could sense something building, like a fever slowly taking hold of the city. Soon it was going to break, and he needed to be ready to act, whatever the risk to his own wellbeing.
He circled over the rooftops, keeping low. His chest still burned with every breath, although the pain had subsided considerably since Astrid had worked her magic, particularly when he flexed his lower back. He had no intention of getting mixed up in any brawls that night; even if Astrid hadn’t warned him off, he knew he couldn’t withstand any more beatings. Not yet. His reactions were dulled, his body lethargic. Another fight like the two he’d already faced this week would probably see the end of him.
Tonight, his sole ambition was to catch a glimpse of the mysterious floating apparition, to put Astrid’s theory to the test.
He hovered in the shadow of a water tower for a moment, before cutting the power to his boosters and lowering himself to the roof of his own apartment building. His boots crunched on the gravel as he set down.
The apparition had been seen around these parts, according to the news reports, and he hoped it was just a matter of time before it put in another appearance. He’d been circling for over an hour, covering around a square mile of the city, but so far he’d seen no indication of anything untoward. In fact, the city seemed unusually quiet, as if it were holding its breath for tomorrow’s parade.
He crossed to the corner, hopping up onto the low wall. Below, even at this hour, people were still flowing about the maze of streets like blood cells coursing through the veins and arteries of the city.
Elsewhere, Manhattan was dreaming. At least, that’s how it seemed to him—all the brilliant neon and fizzing electric lights, the holographic statues glowing sharp and blue in the darkness, police blimps bobbing beneath the canopy of cotton wool clouds, picked out by the tails of their own search beams. It all seemed like a distant dream, conjured up by the collective imagination of the citizens, sleeping now in their beds.
Maybe it was the painkillers talking. Or perhaps it was what Astrid had said, about the earth reflecting the heavens and the design of ancient gods. If those gods had been supplanted, what had replaced them? Mankind itself? Did that mean they had now assumed the power to manipulate the heavens, too?
He heard a thud from somewhere behind him, and turned, half expecting to see the apparition there, watching him. There was nothing.
He crossed to the other side of the rooftop, scanning the streets as he walked. There it was again, a distant thud, like the rumble of brewing thunder. It had come from ground level, though, a couple of streets away. He boosted across to the building on the other side of the cross street, and ran across the narrow roof, avoiding a large skylight.
He peered down into the gloom, his night-vision goggles casting everything in a faint red glow.
His heart sank.
An Enforcer was down there, bearing down on an unarmed man. The sound had been its fist, pummeling the concrete as it attempted to crush him; he could see the tide of broken slabs it had left in its wake.
The Ghost sighed. To get involved now would be fraught with danger. He still hadn’t come up with a practical way of stopping the Enforcers, and he doubted he’d be able to pull the same trick again, tempting it up the side of a building. He couldn’t withstand the beating necessary to lure it in, for a start.
Still, he couldn’t leave an unarmed man to be murdered by the thing in cold blood. He was going to have to try a snatch and grab—lift the man out of there as quickly as possible, and try not to get hit in the process.
He didn’t have time to consider—he pulled the cord and dived off the building, bringing his arms around before him like a swimmer making a swan dive. The air rushed past his face, cool and invigorating, as he hurtled toward the flagstones below.
His boosters kicked in about halfway down, shooting him forward, and he angled his body, swooping down low, twisting in front of the Enforcer and grabbing for the man, grappling him around the waist.
He hoisted him up into the air and they shot across the ground. The Ghost’s arms burned as he tried to cling to his payload, and the man, suddenly realizing what was happening to him, started to beat down upon the Ghost’s back with both fists, yelling curses and shouting to be set down.
“All right! All right!” The Ghost twisted, sending them careening down an alleyway, and, unable to reach inside his coat to cut the power, used a nearby trash cart as the next best thing to a soft landing.
“What do you think you’re doing?” bellowed the man, as he picked himself up, dusting off a filthy banana peel from his clothes. In his haste, the Ghost hadn’t noticed what the man was wearing, but now he could see that he was dressed in flowing black robes, and had a scarf wrapped around his head, so that only his eyes were exposed.
“Getting you away from that thing,” said the Ghost. “It was about to pulverize you.”
“I was luring it into a trap, you bloody fool!” He reached behind him, pulling a curved blade from his belt. He tossed it from one hand to the other, and it caught the light, glinting menacingly. “I should kill you now for your interference, but you haven’t left me the time.”
He hopped down from the heap of overturned trash, and ran for the mouth of the alleyway.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” said the Ghost. “A simple thanks would have been enough.”
He ran after the man, his feet stirring puddles of effluvia from the bins. Trap or not, the man had no chance of taking the Enforcer down with a sword. He was going to get himself killed, and whoever he was, the Ghost was going to stop him. He hadn’t had the opportunity to check the man’s wrist for a tattoo, but the suspicion had already bloomed that he might be involved in whatever was going on with Ginny, and the reciprocal killings between the cultists and the mob, and the Ghost wanted answers. If keeping him alive was the only way to do it, so be it.
He burst from the mouth of the alleyway into the street, skidding to a halt. The man hadn’t been joking about the trap. There were five, six, seven other men in the street now, all similarly attired, all wielding the same curved blades. They surrounded the Enforcer, dancing forward to jab at the pilot with their swords, drawing streaks of dark blood, as the Enforcer swung its arms in a wild, uncoordinated fashion, smashing up the sidewalk and attempting to keep them at bay.
The Ghost watched as it lumbered over to a parked car, wrenching the driver’s door off and holding it up like a shield, battering away their attacks as they ducked in, swords flashing. It was impressive to watch, the way they harried it, driving it back. They were goading it toward the mouth of a different alleyway, he realized, trying to corner it, like lion tamers maneuvering an errant beast back into its cage.
The Enforcer caught one of them upside the head with the edge of the car door and he went down, blood spraying across the pavement. It took the opportunity to finish him off, lurching forward and crushing him beneath its massive foot. The Ghost cringed at the sound of cracking bones.
Another one went down, too, as it swiped its fist in a low arc, taking out his legs, knee joints exploding. He screamed as he hit the ground, but was silenced seconds later by another blow from its fist. The police surgeon was going to have a difficult time telling him apart from the concrete in the morning.
The Ghost considered his options. If he got involved now, he risked death at the hands of both factions. The idea wasn’t particularly appealing. He felt entirely helpless, standing there watching the battle unfold, but there was little else to be done. His best option was to swoop in when and if they brought the Enforcer down, try to disarm one of the men and get them somewhere else where he could question them. It wouldn’t be easy, but it might give him the answers he was looking for.
He hugged the shadows in the mouth of the alleyway, remaining on guard.
The men had now managed to drive the Enforcer back into the alley opening, and were holding it in check with their hit-and-run tactics, jabbing at the pilot then pulling back, trying to keep out of the way of its fists.
The Ghost adjusted his goggles, straining to see. As he watched, the shadows around the Enforcer suddenly seemed to spring to life, tumbling out of the alley mouth to reveal another six men. These, too, were dressed in flowing black robes, although they were armed with blowpipes, rather than swords.
They flowed around the Enforcer like pooling oil, their blowpipes raised. While their sword-wielding companions kept the thing occupied, they raised their blowpipes to their lips and issued a synchronous volley of darts, which struck the pilot in a meticulous line, forming a necklace of feathered darts around his throat.
The men fell back, moving outwards in a widening circle around the Enforcer, as, enraged, it hurled the car door into their midst, lifting another man from his feet and sending him careening back into a building. He struck the wall with a crunch, and slid unconscious to the ground.
The Enforcer took an unsteady step forward, and then seemed to pivot on its left foot, almost toppling. It slammed its fist into the ground to steady itself, and hung there for a moment, still and silent. Then the pilot began to seize up inside his harness, muscles twitching, spittle frothing at his mouth. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, and the Enforcer suit began to shake, mirroring his uncoordinated gestures, thrashing at the ground and sending plumes of tarmac into the air.
It toppled onto its back, still twitching as the poison ran its course, chewing up the road as it clawed unknowingly at the ground.
Within moments, the pilot was dead. The suit froze, caught in a bizarre, ungainly pose as the poison constricted the pilot’s muscles, and his curling limbs caused the machine to hug itself until the pistons popped with a hissing release of gas.
The Ghost—who had been fixated on the spectacle of the Enforcer’s demise—glanced around, searching for a likely target amongst the men.
They were all gone—every single one of them. They hadn’t even waited around to see their work completed, but had simply melted away, running off into the night. He’d been a fool. He’d waited too long for the fight to play out.