Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods (11 page)

And sound, everywhere sound. A woman with a portable stereo singing an aria from some opera that I swear Mother must have played in the house a hundred times without my ever learning its title. She sang in German, finding beauty in the notoriously harsh language. The entire commuting mass was her orchestra, with low chatter, the roar of trains, the sounds of rain-wet boots squelching on the concrete, sloshing in puddles, and the dripping of hundreds of sources of runoff.

A group of commuters banked left from the group ahead of me, veering for the exit to the street.

Behind them, I saw my sister, standing as still as a living statue. Though she lacked the extensive gray or white makeup the performers used, she looked no less cast from granite, as weather-beaten as the rocks upon a shore. She spotted me, and smiled. As if she’d been waiting all morning. Maybe she had.

I could see three police out of the corner of my eye, two standing together, the other looking down to the other end of the hall, toward other trains. I could call out to them, but that would force her hand. She’d flee without my being able to learn her next move. Or worse, she’d throw caution to the wind and slaughter hundreds.

There were too many bystanders for me to use any workings. If she struck, I might be able to respond, but everything about this situation was tense, a pile of dynamite with fresh cord atop a pile of flint.

So talk it was.

“Good morning, sister,” I said, stepping close enough to be heard over the din. I kept a hand free, a few inches off my hip, in case I needed to draw power with haste. The crowds continued past us and our conversation became a rock in the river of human movement. People parted ways for us and then closed ranks on the other side. The opera singer continued belting, doubtless singing of sorrow, lost love, or betrayal. All were appropriate.

“Good morning, brother dear.” Esther beamed, the fake smile that she wore when she needed to be a good little girl and show Mother and Father how loyal and devoted she was. It was a smile without sentiment. I could not generally read faces outside of my family, but I knew Esther well enough to understand that the only forces that drove her were ambition and cruelty.

I kept my voice low as a police officer walked by, trying not to give away my anger lest we draw attention and force Esther’s hand. There were too many variables, too many innocents present to justify a confrontation. Not to mention the very high likelihood that Esther would bring the entire street down on us as a part of the melee.

“You’re not going to succeed, Esther. If you can’t get the Hearts, you won’t be able to break the chains, and you certainly won’t be able to wake the unborn. If you go home now, I’ll let you live,” I said, not knowing if I meant it.

Esther’s smile soured, her eyes darkening, mouth twitching. “How generous, brother. But how do you intend to cover it all, to keep them safe?” Esther waved a dismissive hand at the crowd.

“This disgusting garbage pile of a city is practically without end, piled up like a gigantic trash barge.

“You think the four of you can stop me? Or have you made an army of friends since yesterday? I know how talking to people was always your favorite thing. I brought Father’s knife; your new friends can go and join Thomas . . .” Esther showed the pommel of the knife, peridot shining, as if hungry. “His poor parents,” she taunted. “They still think he’s missing, you know. The papers say that the two of you disappeared together. There were rallies, searches, billboards and all.”

“Monster,” I said through gritted teeth, guilt and loss flooding over me once more as they did every night. “You’ll never get the rest of the Hearts.”

“That’s rather bold, brother, especially since the victory at the dance class was not yours, but bought at the cost of a sliver of a mortal’s soul, fed to a cosmic fence-sitter.”

Sliver of a soul? What did she mean? Was there really a cost for the Gardener’s intervention? Is that why Nate had been so unsettled? What was he not telling us?

I tried to recover, continue the conversation so I could keep Esther tied down and give the others time to respond. “We don’t need to be everywhere. Just everywhere you are,” I said, forcing my own smile.

While I talked, I scanned the crowd. The Gardener might be watching my position. Of course, Carter still had the stone to signal Antoinette, and any magical effort on my part while talking would be immediately noticed.

“So, where are you headed next?” I asked. I couldn’t tell if Esther was staying just to taunt me or if making me embarrass myself was even more delightful to her.

Esther rolled her shoulders, stretching. “Oh, I don’t know. I spent the night in the company of a very generous woman. She helped me heal my leg, told me where to find the Raksha, and how I could undermine the stodgy old Gardener. Did you know that their charges are the source of their power? And that without their little crops, they’re barely more powerful than a hedge magician with a staff? Their vast power comes from the harvests. I’d never had the stench of one on me before, never had the chance to ask.”

Half of this could be lies. All of it. But I seared every word into memory, trying to create a mosaic of Esther’s story, where her mind was going, what she was trying to make me think about, worry about. Every little piece was a clue.

I could try to stop her right there, challenge for status of scion of the Greene clan, invoke the traditions of our family. If I won, I could head this off until another of my siblings could challenge. But I would not even make it that far, for no skill did I possess where she was not my superior. Not yet, at least.

Esther reached out and put a hand on my cheek, her touch the only gentle thing about her. “I will succeed, and when I do, you will have one more chance to return to the fold. The coming age will be glorious, Jacob. I saw it last night, as I dreamed. The seas will boil, cities will tremble. The gift of change will spread across the earth as tectonic plates scream in ecstasy, redrawing the map for the Last Age.

“And we will be queens and kings, the chosen ones. Are you really so deluded to give all of that up for some perceived slight, because of some momentary weakness of character? I thought you were stronger than that, little brother.”

This had the ring of truth. Terrifying, plausibly insane truth. She’d seen something, but it couldn’t be the only truth. The future was not set, was not already told, prophecy or no. To think otherwise would be to give up on life, give up on all of these people. The opera singer, dreaming of the spotlight. The churro-vendor mother, working for a better life for her children. The police, working to preserve the peace.

I looked to the exits again, hoping help would arrive, wishing against all likelihood that anyone would come, yet paralyzed with fear at what might happen to the people here if it did. Esther would not yield if cornered.

Stepping back, I nodded to Esther. “We will have to see. Unless you want to draw the attention of the police, you should leave now. We’ll meet again soon enough, I imagine.”

Esther chuckled. “So confident. It would be lovely to roughhouse like the old days, bring the roof down, but I have things to do. It’s been so lovely speaking with you, brother. Do keep in touch.”

She raised her hands and snapped, once.

Ten feet away, the churro-selling woman gasped and grabbed at her throat.

No. No. Don’t. I hadn’t even seen her craft the working, but it could be nothing else. I didn’t believe in that much coincidence.

I dashed over to the woman, forgetting Esther, who was doubtless making her escape. I narrowed my eyes to see the threads of Deepness wound tight around the woman’s throat like a noose, and reached out with my will to unravel them. I couldn’t touch her without becoming a suspect but would be one regardless because of my speedy response. I had to look like a Good Samaritan. She was younger than I’d thought, probably less than thirty, but with bags under her eyes that suggested many sleepless nights.

“Help!” I shouted first, then sank with the woman to the floor, making my will a vise to push open and free her throat, to relieve the pressure crushing her windpipe. I had no time to call upon anything but my own life force, using my breath to summon hers.

The police would come soon, but normal CPR would do nothing unless I released the pressure. Esther’s working lingered. The Deeps had been tied, self-sustaining. It would last more than long enough to kill the woman, if I knew Esther’s power.

I opened the woman’s collar, unraveled the tightly-wound scarf, and tried to make as much room for her neck as possible, masking my real purpose, uniting will and motion to pry back the strands of the hex and let her throat bring in air.

“Get back, sir!” a Hispanic policewoman said, sliding to the ground and taking the choking woman in her arms.

Miming a slow reaction to the policewoman’s arrival, I tore out a thick strand of the choking braid, releasing some pressure on the woman’s neck.

A sharp intake of breath told me I’d done it. She would live. The police would get her to the hospital, and they would stimulate breathing long enough for the hex to wither away, unmoored from its source of power.

I backed away, faded into the crowd, leaving the scene to the policewoman. I didn’t have time to answer questions, did not want to be known to the authorities, even as a Good Samaritan.

I’d saved at least one life today. Now I had to make sure it hadn’t merely been a short stay of execution.

As I was about to walk up the steps to the surface, someone shoulder-checked me from the side and steamrolled me into a strangely deserted side passageway.

I turned to see an older black woman in a patchwork jumble of clothes, a threadbare beanie atop unkempt black-and-silver hair. Her face was pocked with acne scars, but her eyes were clear, intense. She gripped my jacket and held me against the wall with fearsome strength.

“You’re either really brave, or really stupid. Either way, you’re never going to hurt anyone ever again,” she said, and raised her fist for a knockout punch.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

I
raised my hands to protect my face. “Wait! What? How?” the three questions came all at once, any filter between my mind and mouth gone (if there had been much of one to begin with).

The woman did wait, perhaps as confused by my response as I was by her sudden assault.

“Who are you?” I said, my voice cracking.

“Don’t matter who I am. Just matters what you’ve done,” the woman said.

“I just saved a woman’s life!” I shouted, forgetting our odd privacy.

My assailant turned, looked back into the central walkway. I looked as well, seeing the stricken vendor’s strained but steady breathing, the second officer standing two paces away, talking into her radio.

“The woman I was with attacked her, and it was me that stopped it. Who are you, and what do you think I’ve done?”

The pressure on my chest lessened. Not vanished, just lessened, the wall no longer pressing into the back of my skull.

“You look too alike to not be related. Who is she to you?” the woman asked.

“She’s my sister, and I’m trying to stop her.” I spoke as quickly as I could, eager to get my side across and move the situation away from a place that involved me getting pummeled while commuters actively ignored the whole scene.

Given unresolved threads of institutional racism, you’d think a black woman assaulting a white man would draw a response, but it was as if we were invisible to the main corridor.

Remembering the Gardener’s portal yesterday, I wondered if this place was exactly as it seemed.

The woman had said something, but I’d been caught up in my own thoughts.

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

The woman’s brows furrowed, eyes narrowing.

“I said how do I know I can trust you, that you’re not just trying to play me since you were stupid enough to get caught?”

I saw as she shifted her weight that she had a sawed-off shotgun hung from a cord on her right shoulder, as well as a knife stuffed into her boot.

Whoever this woman was, she was equipped for more than just random New York muggings. An undercover officer, perhaps? I hadn’t known that NYPD knew of the supernal world.

“Ah,” I said, not wanting to lose the conversational thread as I pondered. “That’s very fair. Given my familial heritage, there’s not much reason to trust me. But if your contacts in the city are extensive, you’ll know a woman named Antoinette Laroux, daughter of the late Madame Laroux. I’ve been lending her my assistance. I’ve also recently made the acquaintance of one of the Gardeners, and if you know anything about Gardeners, the fact that I am still standing means that I am entirely on your side, assuming your side is the one that would like the earth to keep going as it has.”

“Not as it has, that’s for damned sure. But I’m on the side of there being an earth.”

I nodded. “A fair point. But rest assured that I am doing everything I can to ensure the earth continues as is,” I said, holding my hands up by my head.

The pressure lessened. “Then why didn’t you do anything when you were just talking with her?” the woman said, pointing back to the main room.

“Because I am afraid of casualties, and Esther is not, save for those that draw the attention of too many authorities all at once. The Deeps are a powerful ally, but deflecting bullets is tremendously taxing even for sorcerers of her skill. We were trying to get more information out of each other, each using the neutral territory to feel the other out. She’d been waiting for me for a while, I imagine. Or has a way of tracking me despite my best efforts.”

“And what did you find out?” she asked.

“Not a great deal. She still wants me to rejoin the flock, which I can tell you with great certainty is impossible, but she’s very confident. She indicated that she may go to Queens next to wrest its Heart from the Raksha who reside there, though I’ve been informed by Antoinette that they can handle themselves, that anonymity is their ally.”

“Two days ago, I’d have said that the magi in Brooklyn could handle themselves, and look how that went,” the woman said.

“True.” We were silent for a moment, and a thought caught me. “I’m Jacob. And you are?”

The woman looked me up and down again, then sighed. “Call me Dorothea.”

I extended a hand for a shake, and Dorothea met it. We shook, and Dorothea released me entirely.

“May I ask your disposition within the community? I am new to the city, and am still learning who is who. Mostly over the last couple of days, as it’s become painfully important, but that’s my own fault. I had intended—”

“I’m with the Broadway Knights,” Dorothea said.

I waited for further explanation. Deciding none was forthcoming, I asked, “And they are?”

Another sigh. “We look after the people who fall through the cracks. The homeless, mostly. The cops, even the ones who have a heart and a clue, can’t do much for the homeless population, and there’re a lot of us in the city. Shelters only go so far.”

“Us?”

“I can hardly protect them if I’m off living in a rent-controlled studio in Williamsburg, can I?” Dorothea said, chuckling.

A good point. “I suppose not.”

Someone walked by the hallway, then turned in to head directly for us. It was Carter.

“Who are you?” Carter pointed at Dorothea.

Dorothea settled back into a ready stance, right hand floating down to her belt.

“Carter, this is Dorothea, one of the Broadway Knights, as I’ve just discovered. Dorothea, this is my roommate, Carter. He’s been helping as well.”

Carter slowed, exiting prefight intimidation mode. “Hello.” Then to me, “We’re going to be late. Gardener needs us somewhere ASAP. He’s got a bead on Esther.”

“She was just here,” I said.

“Then what the hell are you doing here instead of following her?” he asked, voice too loud for the room.

“That’s my fault,” Dorothea said. “I thought they were together.”

“Again,” I said, “an understandable mistake. But now we must depart. If the Gardener can track Esther, we must isolate her and force a confrontation, end this before it can escalate further. Care to join us?” I asked in Dorothea’s direction.

“Don’t think you could stop me.”

“Excellent. Carter, lead on.”

And so he did.

We followed Carter out of the station and proceeded to the east. I’m sure we were quite the sight. Two men and a woman, all of different races, running like the devil was on our heels through Times Square and up toward the Flatiron District.

To our incredible luck, no police decided to follow us, and crowds parted as we charged across street after street. I suspected that part of each was due to Dorothea’s standing in the Broadway Knights. The city had far more mysteries and supernal layers than I’d expected, though, to be honest, I’d mostly had my head in the sand about it all after my first visit to Threshold Books. To my serious detriment, given how quickly things were unraveling now, partially due to my ignorance.

This time, my mental digression did not earn me bruised knees or ankles, as I kept pace with Carter.

“Left!” Carter said as we approached a corner. Except that turning left would involve darting through moving traffic.

“The light!” I said.

“Fuck it!” Carter said, and reached out to grab a pole and turn into the street. I blanched, as did Dorothea. But Carter was undaunted. He darted between the slowly moving cars, then hurdled a taxicab, sliding across the far side of the hood, finding his feet, and running on. He looked over his shoulder, then slowed. “Come on!”

“You’re crazy, kid!” Dorothea said. The light turned yellow, and cars slowed, three stuck in the intersection, bold enough to declare themselves more important than their perpendicular counterparts, even as the opposite side’s lights turned green.

Dorothea and I jogged across the street, weaving through the halted cars. As we crossed, Carter took off again, taking a long, but not impossible lead.

Wishing I’d kept in better shape, I found myself flagging behind Dorothea, despite the fact that the woman must have been twenty, possibly thirty years my senior.

But I was at least four inches taller, much of it in my legs. So I huffed, leaned forward, and pushed myself to catch up.

Another two blocks later, Carter held up a hand, and we slowed.

“She’s around the corner. Antoinette and the Gardener are coming in from the other side of the park.”

“What’s here? How many civilians will there be in the park? And how are they signaling you?”

Carter chuckled. “The stone is basically a magical headset. It just needed to attune to me for a few hours.”

“Kind of her to share that earlier,” I said.

Dorothea put a hand up to her lips, the international sign for “shush.”

We nodded. Dorothea pointed to Carter, gesturing for him to go first, then told me to head right. She would go left behind Carter. I took it that Dorothea was former military, perhaps former police, judging by her comment about the NYPD. My curiosity began to go off on a tangent, wondering how she’d gotten into the magical world, where her life had taken a turn.

Carter moved, and I gathered my focus, turning the corner and looking both for Esther and for a path to flank right.

I walked quickly, trying to be nonchalant. I made my best attempt to affect the hurried self-importance of some New Yorkers I’d seen, where they moved with such surety of purpose that it was clear that they were entirely sure that they were the most important person on the block, and that it was only appropriate for others to clear the way.

The park was filled with kiosks set up for the holidays, the trees matched by constructs decorated with signs. And there were plenty of civilians. But we might not get another chance. If I could put on the pressure fast enough, perhaps we could isolate her. Or if I could clear the park, quickly.

I took the gems in hand, and sapped the power, weaving it with my mind, imagining the shape of a large-caliber rifle, the piercing echo of a gunshot, the instant fight-or-flight panic that went with it. I held the power in my hand and the gun appeared. I held the gun up in the air and released the energy in two quick reports.

The park exploded with reactions—birds scattered, screams of terror leapt unconsciously from park-goers’ mouths, and dozens dropped to the ground in fear.

Guilt held my heart in a vise, that I was inflicting this trauma upon the innocents in the park, but I desperately needed them to go.

Esther stood out in the center of the park, the only one around her not to drop to the ice. She turned, eagle eyes searching for the gunman. She found me, her eyes locking on.

I raised my hands, drawing more power from the gems in my jacket, and the duel began in earnest.