Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods (17 page)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

T
he impact of landing emptied my lungs, my body collapsing in on itself like a rag doll, slicing through the gelatinous half-solid muck. I had to get free, try to do something for Dorothea as quickly as possible.

I clawed for the way out, keeping my mouth closed to avoid swallowing any of the manifested energy. Swallowing blood tended to go poorly. Esther had tricked me into doing so when she was six and I four. A painful, not overlong stomach pumping later, and I had learned my lesson.

Reaching the edge of the mass led directly into tumbling gracelessly onto the cold grass of the lawn. Once I was free, I dissolved the power that kept the blood-forged mass in shape, and it dissolved into the ground like a sun-warmed pond, staining the winter-burned grass. I pushed up onto all fours, wiped the blood from my face, and said, “Dorothea? Where is she?”

A strong grip lifted me to my feet. Carter. His eyes were wide, as if staring at something far away.

“She’s gone,” he said.

“What about your healing?” I asked.

Antoinette stepped up and pointed at the ground beyond, closer to the building. “No, Jake. She’s actually gone,” I followed the line indicated by her gesture to an empty patch of grass.

“Where’s the body?”

Sveta walked over and said, “She fell into the earth, like it wasn’t even there. But we have to go, now, before Esther comes up with her own way down.”

Looking back up to the roof, I saw Esther staring down, not moving, seemingly with no intention of chasing us. Or she was preparing a working of her own, and wanted the focus. Either way, our best option was to be very far away.

“Lead on,” I said, and we started running once more.

We finally stopped in a Chinese traditional medicine studio tucked away in the basement floor of a side street, with apartments above on all three floors of the brownstone building.

The owners were friends of Sveta’s. Our hosts were an aging Chinese couple. One woman was bald, with smile-set dimples and a mandarin-collared shirt, the other a more diminutive woman with silvered hair, shrunken features, and a comfortable robe. They led us from the front room, which was bedecked with an assortment of overtly “traditional” Chinese curios, from golden lions to jade statues, silk screens, and more.

Our hosts led us to sit in a back room that looked more like a living room, its decoration more sedate. There was a traditional Chinese painting on one wall, but it was not as if the entire room was trying to reassure us with its authenticity.

“Julie, Sarah, this is Jake, Antoinette, and Carter. How are your wards these days?”

Sarah spoke up first, speaking with only the slightest Chinese accent. “We refresh them every week on Monday. They should be fine.”

Sveta shook her head. “Not for this woman. We’ve got a Greene after us.”

The couple’s eyes went wide. Julie turned and headed for a back room. “I’ll get started right away.”

Sarah went to a teapot and poured liquid into three earthenware mugs, handing one to each of us in turn. I smelled the tea, taking in the mixture of floral scents, lemongrass, and ginger. I blew on the tea, watching the ripples flow across the water from my breath. I took another sniff, then a small sip, the water just short of boiling. The heat seared my tongue, but I’d been burned worse before. One was only careless around sacrificial bonfires once.

“Let it steep,” Sarah said.

I held the mug in both hands at my lap, making use of the heated mug even if I had to wait for the tea itself.

The receding adrenaline left me wrung out, shaking. I needed food.

“Might we trouble you for something to eat? I would happily offer remunerations.”

Sarah quirked her head to the side. “I’ll order in from the place around the corner. Run by a friend. Any of you vegetarian?”

Carter said, “No beef, please.”

Antoinette added, “Veggie, here.”

“I’m fine,” Sveta said.

Sarah looked to me. “I’m from North Dakota,” I said.

She smiled, said, “I’ll be right back,” and departed for the front room.

Alternating my hands on the mug to repeatedly infuse heat into them, I looked to Sveta.

“Is now the time for my laundry list of questions?”

Sveta sighed, eyes narrow. “Go on.”

“In reverse chronological order: What do we do next? What happened to Dorothea? How did you jump ten feet in the air from a standing start? Why do you have climbing equipment for five people in the closet of your tiny apartment? Why did that woman give her life when she could have escaped? How did she escape from Esther in the first place?”

I looked up and saw that Sveta was not there anymore. She had moved to the front room, and was massaging her temples.

“I’m not being unreasonable here!” I shouted in Sveta’s direction.

“You kinda are, man,” Carter said.

I flexed my free hand, trying to pull the tension from my head and exorcise it with the nervous motion. Giving up, I stood, spilling hot water on my coat, my pants, and my hand. I dropped the mug, shaking the hot water off of my hands.

“That’s it! I’ve been running nonstop, drawing more power in an afternoon than a sane sorcerer would do in a week, and my supposed allies seem perfectly content to keep me in the dark, as if I were an attack dog. Given that my family actually keeps attack dogs, and I was personally responsible for having to put several down over the years when they went rabid, I am entirely uncomfortable with this position. Now will someone explain what’s going on, or are you all going to just walk away?”

Sveta stood in the front room, staring at me through narrowed eyes. I turned to look at Antoinette and Carter, who sat silent.

Antoinette said, “Jake, we need you to calm down.”

“That is precisely the least useful thing to say to someone who is outraged! I know that I need to calm down! Do you think I like being this upset, and burned as well? I’d just like enough respect from someone to at least start answering my questions before Esther finds us and we have to go off running again for another hour of cat and mouse.” At that last, I flung a hand out to the side.

Instead of the air I was expecting, my arm met resistance.

“Aaah!”

I turned, and saw Julie beside me, hands covering her nose, eyes already teary.

The anger bled out of me as I realized my carelessness. “Oh no! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” I trailed off as Sarah practically leapt across the building to her wife.

“You, sit,” Sarah said in an imperious, uncompromising voice. I sat.

Sarah walked her wife to another of the chairs, then left through the far doorway again.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again to Julie.

“I’ll be fine. Are you calm now?”

My ears burned again with anger, this time at myself for my impatience, my childishness.

I picked my mug up off the floor, saw that it had been chipped, a portion of the top lip broken off and sitting on the floor a yard away.

“While shamed by the unwitting harm I inflicted, I still require answers. If not to the trivialities, at least to the important questions: What do we do next, and what happened to Dorothea?” I asked, perfectly aware that I was digressing from the conversation.

Antoinette’s face darkened. Carter’s shoulders sank.

But it was Sveta who spoke. “When a Knight dies, the city takes them back. Their spirits strengthen the city’s protections.”

“What, like a pseudopod subsumed into its parent body?”

“Basically,” Antoinette said.

“If the city itself has wards, why haven’t said wards done anything to help us?” I asked.

“They have, it just happens that your family has dumped enough blood sacrifices down the gullets of the Gatekeepers that they can run roughshod over the city’s protections,” Antoinette said.

I closed my mouth. That would do it.

“That is . . . most unfortunate. Dorothea’s assistance, while briefly felt, was impressive. I would ask to assist with any remembrances or memorials that are to be held, once this crisis is completed.”

Sarah nodded. “That’s very kind.”

Sveta said, “We managed to keep the Heart out of Esther’s hands, so our next step is to get everyone back into fighting shape, and then look for a new hiding spot. Your sister’s on a deadline, right?”

“The third circle must be completed in time to birth the Younger God at the height of the solstice. A delaying tactic would work, assuming that she does not switch to pursuing the other Hearts.”

Sveta nodded.

“And another question. Who are you? We barely had the chance to meet.”

The woman chuckled, tension bleeding from her face for the first time since I’d met her. She took a seat.

“I’m Sveta. I look after the community in Queens.”

“Look after. Would you be able to unpack that a bit, perhaps? And share your capabilities, as it appears that we may be working together in highly lethal situations?”

“Sure. I’m Raksha, but the sneaky kind.” Most Raksha could hide their supernatural heritage, but it took concentration, like having to consciously breathe.

“Toughness, speed, strength, better senses, that kind of deal,” Carter added.

I nodded. “Thank you. And where do you come from? Have you always been in this community?”

“Born and raised,” she said, pounding her heart with a fist. “My family’s been guardians for the Raksha in Queens since before the Statue of Liberty turned green.”

“Another lifer,” Antoinette said.

“So it seems. So few people come into the magical world without some kind of grounding. Or few who do so survive long enough to be known and remembered as anything other than statistics,” I said.

“Thanks for that tour through Morbid Town, freak,” Carter said. But this time, when he said “freak,” he said it with a brighter, joking tone.

“Thank you for your assistance, Sveta, and for humoring me in my inquiries. Do you require anything of us at the moment?”

“I’d like some peace and quiet until the food arrives.”

To that, I nodded. Antoinette helped me as I bandaged up my bloodied forearm, and then we waited in not-quite-comfortable silence.

Sometime later, a cheap door chime rang, and Sarah went to answer. Julie still held the ice pack on her face, covering a bandage.

The smell of grease and fatty foods wafted across the front room and hit my nostrils like a siren’s song.

I stood and crossed to a stack of plates, trying to make myself useful in atonement for my carelessness.

Plates distributed to all, we dug into the food, which was as workmanlike and delicious as promised.

I’d never eaten anything that purported itself to be high-end Chinese food, and had no desire to do so. For my Upper Midwestern palate, the greasier the better, and this was heaven.

Silence dominated for several minutes as the four of us who’d been on the run tore into our food. Julie’d selected beef and broccoli for me, a healthier choice than I’d have made for myself, but it hit several of the right spots. Protein and other nutrients, the building blocks to repairing cells and refreshing the spirit. Plus the iron to replace lost blood.

When our dishes were nothing but streaks of sauce and orphaned grains of rice, Julie took them off to the kitchen, and Sarah looked to Sveta. “Where will you go next?”

The woman pursed her lips. “Ideally, we’d let these three sleep for a while, but I don’t trust your wards to keep this woman off our trail. No offense. She’s probably the nastiest thing I’ve come across in a long time.”

“A strange thing to say from a woman who looks no older than I am,” I said, failing to restrain the stray thought. At least it was verbal flailing, not physical.

“There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Granted,” I said. “But that’s ‘ideally.’ What will we do next? Run from safe house to safe house until my sister abandons the task she believes she was put on this earth to do? That’s no living worth speaking of.”

“We’ll come up with something,” Antoinette said.

“I think we can beat her,” Carter said. “Each time, we learn a bit more about how she fights, what we can expect. Eventually we’ll be able to beat her with numbers.”

“Or one of us will die,” I said. “She’s still enjoying the game, Carter. As soon as she thinks there’s a chance she’ll lose, at least one of us will be bound for a body bag.”

Sveta took a sip of what was either her third or fourth cup of tea. “Sadly, I think he’s right. And we’re a person down now. I’m good, but Dorothea knows this city better than anyone I’ve ever met. And I doubt that the Knights will be doing anything other than going to ground by now, getting folks deep into the subway tunnels.”

“We’ve eluded her long enough now that I wager she’s headed for one of the other Hearts. I’d guess Staten Island,” I said.

“Seems likely,” Antoinette said. “The pack there is tough, but they’ll need our help if we can get there in time.”

I did some mental math. “Antoinette and I should go to Staten Island. Carter, you stay with Sveta and keep this Heart safe until we can return.”

Carter cocked his head to the side. “Doesn’t that contradict the whole we’ll-wear-her-down-with-numbers thing?”