Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods (13 page)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

D
orothea lead us downtown, through midtown to the Javits Center portion of Hell’s Kitchen. Curiously named, the neighborhood was largely bereft of kitchens, as despite hosting an international convention center, it seemed as if there was a statute forbidding any restaurants to exist within three blocks of said convention center.

And as for Hell, the area had a rougher history, which had mostly evaporated in recent years, though it remained not the nicest of neighborhoods, largely due to the fact that a huge section near the convention center had been under construction for the last three years, with no signs of completion.

Dorothea stopped at a street corner, and Carter asked, “How does this navigation work, then? Not that I don’t appreciate putting distance between us and the police. I am quite fond of that part.”

Dorothea looked both ways, watching the lights and the traffic. “It’s part of the territory. The city and I, we have a connection. I read the patterns. Traffic is like the circulation of her blood—accidents send pain signals, bringing the antibodies of the emergency responders. The city tells me when she’s hurting, when her children have been attacked, and where. Give me a minute, and I’ll tell you where we go next.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “You and the other knights have bonded with the city, been taken in to serve like white blood cells, attacking infections, protecting the city from within. I’d heard of similar champions in the Old World, and of champions among the Sioux and other tribes, but our records had precious little about nonindigenous cases in North America.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Now try to keep up,” Dorothea said, trundling across the street.

I tried to watch the streets as she did, attempting to reduce the seemingly random sights and sounds into variables. But without context, how was I to know what the smell of spoiled food in trash cans mixed with the meaty steam from a gyro cart, the angry honking of a cab nearly running over a man crossing against a red light, and the cluster of three jogging men in gray sweats could possibly mean to Dorothea?

I gave up on finding the deeper meaning—it was not for me to know. Instead, I tested the souvenir knife wound that Esther had left me. It was still tender but was no longer the would-have-been-fatal wound it was when Esther so graciously shoved the family’s ritual dagger around in my insides and ripped it out with a twist.

“Hello?” Antoinette said. I turned and saw her speaking on the phone. “Yeah, we’re closed for the time being.” Then she waited, and I heard the muffled sound of a voice on the other side. “No, I can’t handle any special orders right now, I’m sorry.” Another pause. “No, I don’t know when the store will be open again, I’m sorry. But if you’re totally out, I can find a time to meet up and get you enough to tide you over a couple of days, Mrs. Pelevin.”

Antoinette hung up, and I raised an eyebrow, trying to be companionable but not overly inquisitive.

“Customer. She uses one of Mom’s tea recipes for her arthritis.”

I nodded. That thought made me wonder how many people depended on Antoinette, in small ways or in big ways. The ripple that each person left in the world, for good and ill. What ripple was I leaving in the city? And could mine even hope to cancel out Esther’s, or would the combined wave merely drown even more people clinging to the rocks?

“Got it. Let’s go,” Dorothea said, breaking me from my reverie. She set off across the street, bearing south.

Dorothea’s seemingly-purposeful pathway (which looked a great deal to me like wandering, but was clearly not) led us through Chelsea to the Meatpacking District, which proved livelier than the area near the convention center, though precious little meatpacking still happened in the neighborhood, according to Dorothea’s tour-guide-esque commentary about the neighborhood as she led us down the streets and into an alley. She stopped five paces in to brief us.

“The city’s telling me the missing people are here, but it didn’t give me anything on Esther. I think we have to assume she’ll be here, and if we’re lucky, it’ll just be the missing people.”

Nods all around.

“If she is here, we all go for her straightaway.”

Dorothea looked to Antoinette. “You get your boys to occupy whatever she throws at us.”

To me. “You throw as much of your dark stuff at her as you can, hold her attention.”

Then, finally, to Carter. “And we rush her. Follow my lead. We go high-low, split to flank her so Jake can keep up the firepower. Go for the kill, no holding back. Make her burn whatever reserves she has.”

Dorothea took a breath, and cracked her neck, shoulders, and back, wincing. “Ready?”

I raised a hand. “Sorry, hold on. Can you tell us what else you can do with your connection to the city? Should I assume strength, stamina, or other powers due to being sustained by the ley lines of the city?”

“Yep. Now let’s go.”

“Care to expand on that at all?” I asked. “I prefer to be properly informed before heading into battle.”

“Don’t you worry too much about ol’ Dorothea, and you’ll be fine. Let’s get moving.”

More nodding. “Very well,” I said, not satisfied but willing to proceed, given the urgency.

“Don’t you worry, kid. I’ve been cleaning up the streets since her mama was your age,” Dorothea said, indicating Antoinette.

Content to let the comment stand, Dorothea led us up to the door of a nondescript warehouse building. There were tracks of muck and standing water at the door, as if someone had spent a significant amount of time loading something in or out. Or someones, for that matter.

Dorothea went to the door, holding her short sword in her off hand. Carter stood behind him, me in the middle, Antoinette in the rear, as her work required the least proximity.

The door opened with a notable scraping squeal, the door improperly set, grinding against the frame. Once it cleared, Dorothea’s strength suddenly sent it slamming into the wall.

“There goes subtlety,” I said at a whisper, nerves bringing out a bout of thoroughly unhelpful snippiness.

The Knight and the Nephilim headed down the hall, moving with practiced stillness. I followed, trying to be as quiet as I could. We learned to be quiet in my family too. Childhood games that I realized in retrospect had been preparation for stalking, slaying, and kidnapping.

Antoinette followed on my heels, stealthy enough in her own right, as we made our way down a long, unlit hall. I drew upon the gems again and smeared the energy over my eyes. I blinked, and the black-on-black outlines came alive in my vision. There were two doors fifteen feet down the hall, one straight ahead, the other on the right.

Dorothea walked confidently, not seeming bothered by the darkness, and opened the right hand door with more studied care than the front door. This door had been better set, however, and opened without complaint. The room beyond was lit by wide overhead bulbs.

The storage room was wide and tall, with stacks on both sides that looked like the sort for crates of meat, though they were entirely empty. We assembled inside, and when I got all the way in, I saw a pair of bound figures I took to be Dorothea’s missing people.

And surrounding them were three Exxeven, bloody smiles as wide as their faces.

Esther was nowhere to be seen, but she’d left more than enough guards behind to count as a trap.

And behind us, the front door slammed shut.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

“E
xxeven!” I said, hoping that any who didn’t know the creatures by sight might recognize them by name.

Exxeven were lesser servants of the Gatekeepers—beings that stemmed from the same chthonic source as the Gatekeepers themselves. Neither celestial nor infernal, they were merely endemic to the earth, by-products of the Deeps. Eldritch wildlife, one might say. Not naturally hostile, the Exxeven were territorial and easily bargained with for service.

One of the creatures stayed behind with the captives, and two ambled toward us on four feet, the other two legs held up like claws. Exxeven resembled a twisted cross between a spider and a wild boar, with limbs like a spider but thicker, and their maws had both mandibles and tusks.

Carter and Dorothea fanned out to intercept the creatures, leaving me time to draw upon the remaining power in the gems.

I plunged a hand into the bag of borrowed materials, drawing power. Using the Deeps against Exxeven was difficult, akin to trying to use water to choke a fish. This was actually a case where using a lesser caliber of power was advisable, especially when paired with peridot, the gem most closely associated with the Deeps. Feeling around, my fingers wrapped tight around the distinctive shape of the crystal, two notched bumps side by side, and I felt the power filter through the gem like a key in a lock.

I spun power into a lasso, corded thick, grasping the rope with my free hand, transforming raw power into an object whole and material. I wound up, and threw the lasso at the beast facing Carter when my roommate dodged left to avoid a swipe from the beast’s hoofed leg.

The working caught. I yanked back with both arms, pulling the working in toward me with the might of my will. The creature stumbled, bound around the thorax. It hit the concrete, and Carter seized the opportunity, jumping forward and hacking off one of the creature’s legs.

The beast righted itself on its other legs and moved forward, snarling. I’d not bound the creature’s limbs, so it was still free to resist me. Carter slashed horizontally, cutting off the creature’s counterattack. My roommate moved with liquid grace, each movement flowing into the next without pauses or weaknesses in moments of transition. He’d been well trained, to be sure. If only his mental discipline was as good.

A shape bound past me and tackled the Exxeven facing Dorothea. It was Igbe, red strands weaker than before but still solid enough to send the beast sprawling. Dorothea quick-changed her weapons and let the creature from the Deeps have a taste of buckshot. The shell took a hunk out of the beast’s face, but it kept coming, several limbs wrestling with the spirit while Dorothea switched back to her sword.

All three Exxeven reared back on their three hind legs and let out a discordant screech, exactly out of tune in a way that dug into your mind and replicated, the scream infecting your mind with its wrongness.

I’d hoped to kill one before this could happen.

Exxeven moved in threes for this exact purpose. They were the singers that crafted the world, sub-created beings made by the raw earth that gave it form inside and out. But with the power to shape came the power to un-shape.

That power they were using now, on us.

I dropped to my knees, feeling like my cells were tearing themselves apart, mitochondria revolting, T-cells turning against tissue. Everything was discord.

Cries of pain filled my ears, the discordant song mixing with our screams.

Sorting through the pain, I reached out into the Deeps once more. I’d only have one chance, if that.

I would not call down to the Deeps, but the Exxeven were practically made of it. And that power was far closer, more present. It’s a reason why Exxeven so frequently served the Greenes, as they were nearly defenseless when faced with one that could access the very core of their being.

Reaching out for the Exxeven closest to me—which was probably about to tear into Carter as soon as they were content that we’d been incapacitated—I pulled at its lungs.

The Deeps were like oxygen to the Exxeven. I couldn’t blast them with it, bludgeon them with it.

But there was more than one way to flay a cat, my father had always said.

I grasped the Deepness within the Exxeven, and pulled. I imagined the Deeps within the beast as a balloon, and myself holding the string tied to it. I yanked, willing the energy to me, like I’d done a thousand times. But this time, the energy was five yards away, not a thousand.

The power came, and with it came the creature’s innards. The Exxeven retched, and purple-red lungs spilled out of the beast’s maw, shredded by its tusks. The beast cried out once more, a muted, pained cry through suffocated trachea, and it collapsed.

The Deep power hit my system like a drug, making me giddy. It’d been nearly a year since I tapped that power, and it came back so lovingly, like a soft caress.

After one taste, it would be far too easy to take another.

But I was a Greene no longer, not really.

And with one singer gone, the three-part chord of un-making was broken. A sharp inhale told me I’d been holding my breath, hadn’t been able to, allowed, to breathe.

“Fucking hell!” Antoinette said from behind me.

The red receded, my vision clearing. Instead of shearing apart, my cells merely all burned, like the day after I’d been out in the fields with Saul all afternoon and hadn’t worn sunscreen, but throughout my whole body.

But a burn I could deal with. I focused on the scene.

Igbe tore at the Exxeven that faced Dorothea. Her face was bloody, but I couldn’t see a wound. But to have been that close to a song of un-making . . .

To my side, Antoinette tried to edge around the side of the room and slip past the Exxeven. I just needed to clear the way.

I could try to do the same working on the other creature, end the fight quickly. But after the last fight, I was already taxed. If I overdid it now, on Esther’s minions, what would I have left for her?

Carter and Dorothea fought together, my roommate faring better than the Broadway Knight, either due to her more-than-human heritage or his youth. Carter danced around the creature with flowing cuts and thrusts, while Dorothea was shorter, more jagged in her movements, efficiency without beauty, all stabbing and hacking.

The remaining Exxeven paced in front of the prisoners, cutting off Antoinette’s attempts to reach them. It had likely received orders to guard the kidnapped New Yorkers, keep us busy for as long as possible.

I did not intend to wait in order to find out.

“Igbe, with me!” I said, cutting wide around the beast tussling with the two men.

The red guardian spirit took one more swipe at the Exxeven and then broke off, charging for the fresh beast.

Not what I was hoping for, but I would have to make do. I wheeled to the side so that a stray shot would not hurt the prisoners, rendering our mission moot. I had little doubt that Dorothea would give my blood to the sewers if I got these people killed.

Exxeven were fast learners, and the lasso had been only partially effective, so I needed to come up with a different strategy.

I tapped the Deeps within my body, doled it out in two handfuls, and spread it over my chest, arms, and fists. Then I clenched mentally and solidified the energy, giving myself a crude form of body armor. It was dark, covered in crags and spikes, like melted-and-refrozen ice. So armored, I moved forward, taking a fighting stance.

Igbe was hounding the beast, darting in and out, never staying within the Exxeven’s reach for it to lash out with tusk and hoof.

I slammed down at the creature with both ice-covered hands, a move I’d seen in Carter’s execrable excuse for entertainment, the one filled with oiled, muscled, steroid-laden men and women. Parts of my armor chipped off with the blow, proving my solution was temporary, at best. With more time, I’d be able to—

My train of thought was derailed as a leg swiped out and knocked me from my feet. Deepness chipped off of my chest, fading as it hit the ground. I felt crackling underneath me as the armor weakened on my back.

This won’t last long,
I thought. From the ground, I stole a glance over to Dorothea and Carter. The Exxeven they faced was down two limbs and was bleeding purple from a half-dozen wounds. But Dorothea and Carter were both wounded.

I’d never learned proper teamwork, and I found myself a variable, unable to integrate into my fellows’ efforts.

Standing once more, I removed the weakened Deep-forged armor and reshaped it into a two-handed sword, with a jagged blade, but with a polished-smooth handle and cross-guard. It would do me little good to cut myself on my own weapon.

Hefting the grip in both hands, I charged the beast once more.

Swinging the sword over my head and forward, I let the weapon pull my body, trying to strike with my whole weight to plow through the creature’s defenses.

Proving he was smarter than I’d perhaps given him credit for, Igbe slid to the side in one smooth motion, tearing at the Exxeven’s rear leg. The spirit paid for the blow, taking two sharp hooves directly to the center of his mass, but the creature was sufficiently distracted for my cut to land on its neck. It wasn’t a clean blow, not even a skillful one. But it was enough, chopping halfway through the Exxeven’s neck. The dark light went out of the beast’s eyes, and it crashed into a pile on the floor.

I joined it, the Deep sword dissipating along with my strength, exhaustion finally catching up with me. I know that I heard other sounds of fighting, yelling, steel against carapace, but I did not listen, did not process.