Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods (8 page)

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

I
’d never met lycanthropes before. There were no packs in the Dakotas. My father and grandmother had seen to that years ago.

I was starting to understand why. Our family’s sorcerous might was unmatched, but a wolf moving through thick brush, especially with a pack at her back, could make quick work of an unprepared sorcerer, unless the sorcerer was willing to bring down an entire forest to protect themselves.

It’s what Grandmother had done.

One of the many races made by the gods in the first days, lycanthropes could move among humans without notice, only revealing their power when they wished. When their creator, the moon, was strongest, so were they.

Antoinette cleared her throat. “I am Antoinette Laroux. And a friend told me to show you this.” She produced the Nataraja statue, holding it out in the scant inches between herself and the looming wolf-woman.

The woman chuffed once, very canine in that moment, all pretense of humanity cast aside. She looked Antoinette dead in the eyes, then sized her up, gaze going to her feet and then back up to her eyes.

She took a single step back.

“So you know the Nephilim. Fine. Why are you here?”

“Someone’s after the Hearts. She’s trying to awaken the Younger Gods.”

The wolves snarled as one. All of them, the woman included.

“And you’re here, what, to warn us? As if we aren’t always on guard? There’s precious little of the earth left in this place. You think we aren’t always vigilant?”

“We want to help,” I said, breaking with Antoinette’s request.

The woman snapped at me, baring her teeth. “You smell of the Deeps, boy.”

Again, judged before I was known. Even thousands of miles away from my family’s center of power, I was just a Greene to them. Even if I bested Esther, would I ever be rid of that stain, or would I carry it with me my whole life, my family’s sins painted clearly across my face with the distinctively bland look of our family?

“We’ve had a long day already,” Antoinette said, by way of explanation. “But he’s right. We’re trying to get the whole city to join up so we can stop this woman. She’s ridiculously powerful.”

“Her power means little here,” the woman said. “Her power comes from the Deeps, but this is the horizon, the union of earth and sky, and we are protected.”

“Tell that to the Hidatsa and Arikara packs,” I said. They’d been the last two to give up the fight. The Hidatsa had fled west. The Arikara had been eradicated.

More snarls.

“We are not
them
. But we take your offer as it is intended, in recognition of the Nephilim’s friendship to our pack. Go. This island is sacrosanct. Help the others, and when the time comes, call for us and we will be there. Our fangs will tear her throat and spill her lifeblood. It will be washed away by the Hudson and her stain sent out to sea.”

A cheery sort, this one. I could just imagine what she’s like at parties.

“Care for some juice?”

“I will rip this cup to broken shreds and see its ruin smote upon the mountain.”

“Chips?”

“No, thank you.”

Perhaps not.

“Thank you for your time,” Antoinette said. “How will we call you?”

The woman reached into her sweatshirt, and produced a spent exoskeleton. Cicada, possibly a grasshopper. I’d always been an indoor child. “Crush this beneath your boot and we will know.”

“Will you know where as well?”

The woman snarled at me. “We will know.”

I elected not to probe further, trusting the wolf-woman’s confidence.

Antoinette accepted the exoskeleton, handling it with care and sliding it into the pocket with the Shiva Nataraja statue. “Thank you for your time. We will go now.”

The woman nodded, and another wave of shadows passed over her, leaving behind the wolf she had been before.

In an unexpected act of kindness, the wolves led us to another way down the hill, such that we were able to leave the park with no more bruises and scrapes.

When we were out of earshot of the pack (or, when I assumed we were, the exact details of supernal wolf hearing being an area outside my expertise), I released the hold on my tongue.

“Why did she speak that way?” I asked.

Antoinette raised an eyebrow. “You’re one to ask.”

“I
am
asking. That speech pattern is not familiar to me. I had been informed that the filmic depictions of Native American speech were inaccurate, but her speech was neither that stereotype nor anything with which I am familiar.”

“She’s a wolf, Jake.”

“A lycanthrope, yes. I assume they all are. Is that typical of the local group? A tribal cant, then?”

“Everybody’s got a dialect. They don’t talk to people much, from what I can tell.”

“But how will we know if we don’t ask?” I prodded, struck by Antoinette’s lack of curiosity. Some would call it prudence. But I’d never been the one to stop until I’d gotten to the bottom of something. Be that turning the basement until I found the frequently-cited text that was somehow not on the bookshelves, or waiting and listening at the door until Mother and Father thought we’d all gone to bed so they could resume their fights.

“I don’t really care. I’m not the needs-to-know-everything type. That was more my mom’s bag.”

We arrived at the bus stop. A woman joined us, old before her time, with a multicolored heap of plastic bags in a laundry cart. We suspended our conversation, dwelling in silence as my mind continued to race. I checked my watch several times over the course of the same minute, then turned to Antoinette. “Have you heard anything from Carter?”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry, Jake. We have time.”

I was not so optimistic.

After we had spent seven minutes fidgeting and feeling helpless, the bus appeared, which led directly into another fifty-two minutes of powerlessness. But within the space in the bus, I felt comfortable drawing out one of the texts I’d borrowed from Antoinette’s store and refreshing my familiarity with agate/ruby sympathetic connections and their applications in combat.

The peridot would be my greatest asset in any combat against creatures of the Deeps, but I would be well advised to take a versatile approach, perhaps happen upon a configuration unexpected by Esther and catch her unawares. She was a natural, and had never needed to study as I had. Her power was unquestioned, but she was sometimes shortsighted.

On the ferry trip back, we found a corner of the deck sufficiently remote to speak freely, working through various scenarios—if Esther had already claimed this Heart and that one, this is what she could do, and so on. She had perhaps three of the Hearts at most, one at the least. Antoinette’s connections in the Bronx were not extensive. If Esther had three, the second circle would be opened soon, and the city would take notice.

My seasickness was not as pronounced as on the trip over, but I still found relief in fixing my gaze on the horizon, the vision locked into my mind to help convince my inner ear that we were not about to be hurtled into the sea or whatever it was about the rolling motion of the water that unsettled my equilibrium.

“That place is a battlefield,” Antoinette had said by way of explanation.

“We go there next, then. She may hope to use our reticence against us. But what about Queens?”

“The Raksha in Queens are very capable, and even more secretive. Queens is a big place, and the Raksha have full cooperation of the entire community. People live in Queens to be safe, not for ambition.”

“That seems somewhat reductive,” I said.

Antoinette shrugged. “Not everything I say has to be the gospel truth, you know. This isn’t a trial.”

I blanched at the comment. “But why dissemble?”

“It was a turn of phrase, for emphasis. I think you’re right about the Bronx. It’ll take Esther longer to pin down the Bearer in Queens, so it seems only smart that she’d head north first.”

“Excellent. I would be amenable to stopping for lunch somewhere on the way. Preferably after my stomach has settled again from the ferry ride.”

Antoinette nodded, her gaze turning out to the water.

I wished that my stomach or the water would be calm enough to resume my reading. It was nervous distraction, but still far better than queasiness for my nerves.

Instead, my mind drifted to Esther, spinning out scenarios about the people she could be hurting this very moment, the carnage she could be tearing through this city while eight million people moved around her, ignorant of the coming storm.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

O
ur lunch consisted of dirty-water hot dogs from a vendor three blocks from the ferry station, located around the corner from where we would reenter the subway system. I think I’d spent more time on subway trains these last two days than the entire month previous. And unlike the ferry, the additional exposure did not mollify the feeling of being pressed in like sardines.

I licked the meaty juice from my fingers and tossed the paper hot-dog trough onto a leaning stack of trash overflowing its container, threatening to topple at any moment, then chased Antoinette down the stairs into the Wall Street subway station, once again abandoning the freedom of the sky above for concrete in all directions and the promise of another steel box.

The 2 train arrived after eight minutes. We skipped past the completely empty train for one that was a third full.

“Never get on a totally empty train. There’s always a reason it’s empty,” Antoinette said from her seat.

I elected to stand rather than be squashed in between laborers and harried mothers.

“Why is that?”

Antoinette’s eyes slid to the side, looking in the direction of the harried mother, one babe in her arms, the other wailing in a stroller. She pushed the stroller back and forth with one arm, to no avail. “Usually, it’s about the smell. Barf, rot, sometimes even death. Occasionally wet dog, though not too often.”

“Ah. Well chosen, then.”

We settled into silence there. I’d learned that it was generally not considered polite to converse on the subway, despite the fact that many people, especially younger teens, did it on a regular basis, and frequently at elevated volume. Not to mention the various beggars, performers, and subway preachers with their aggressive thankfulness, turning their gratitude to god into a weapon to use against passengers, so crafted and delivered as to make passengers in the train uncomfortable.

In a city like New York, one could be fairly certain to have, in a single train car: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and a fair chance of Rastafarians, Buddhists, and Pagans. So, Aggressively Presumptive Christianity was entirely out of place. But those sorts were a small, if vocal, minority, I’d learned.

As we pulled out of the Times Square station, Antoinette sat up in her seat, as if stung.

I looked over to her, wordless. Her hand went to her jacket, and came back buzzing with confirmation, the stone vibrating in her hands.

Nodding, I stood and made my way to the door. Since we were on an express, on the north side of the Theater District, chances were we’d need to switch directions.

I just prayed that we’d arrive in time.

We decided to err on the side of telephone use at 72nd Street. Antoinette wove her way through the crowd to the exit and called as we emerged into daylight for the third (fourth?) time that day.

Standing between the two faded brown brick enclosures of the 72nd Street station, I saw the far-more-frequently-white faces of joggers, nannies, and the comfortably retired making their way through the neighborhood, just as ignorant as the rest of the coming doom.

I heard a child squeal with delight, and turned to see a smiling woman pull her child out of a stroller and onto her hip as she stood outside a Trader Joe’s. For some, ignorance was a blessing. I would keep the world safe for this child, its mother, and the rest of them. Humanity had become specialists, and so I would be a specialist. Let me be the sorcerer that kills other sorcerers so that others can stay mothers, doctors, lawyers, couriers, cabbies, and every other thing. There was no need for the city of eight million to know my troubles.

Antoinette’s phone snapped shut, bringing me back. I turned and asked, “Where are they?”

“Theater District. Carter’s hurt, but Esther didn’t get Nate. She bugged out.”

“How?” It was the only relevant question.

“Something about the Gardener. We should get back, ASAP.”

I stepped out onto Broadway and raised my hand.

“Wrong side of the street,” Antoinette said, stepping to the curb of 72nd and whistling. I realized my error. Cabs would seldom stop on the left side of the street, even a one-way street, but many would gladly turn the corner to pick up a fare on the “proper” side.

We found Nate and Carter at a Starbucks in the Theater District, pressed up into a corner, tourists filling every square inch of canopy and cover as they hid from the rain, like they’d melt if an inch of their skin got damp.

Back home, we reveled in the rain, wrought storms from calm skies, and danced in the mud pits, naked. Again, my family was far from normal.

“What now?” I asked, my voice thin. The crowds pressed in on all sides, the walls leaning inward and threatening to swallow me up.“Let’s go somewhere with some more space,” Antoinette said, shimmying so she could get an arm free and gesture outside. We’d be covered by scaffolding throughout most of the street, at least, thanks to the perpetual renovation.

The four of us shuffled our way out to the sidewalk, disentangling ourselves from the human jigsaw puzzle of the café crowd.

On the street, I stretched myself out to my full height and took a long breath, reveling in the relative openness. It was nothing compared to the big plains sky, but it was several degrees less oppressive.

A figure appeared to my left, a wide umbrella open above him—it was the Gardener.

“Come with me,” he said, weaving through us with the effortless elegance of an immortal creature, or perhaps just a native New Yorker.

“Huh?” Carter said. I matched his sentiment but was glad to have not blurted it out quite as inarticulately as he’d done.

Nate fell into step immediately, and the rest of us stutter-stepped in to follow close after. The Gardener turned a corner, then gave his umbrella a three-quarter turn counter-clockwise, a pinwheel of water cascading off the black vinyl. He stepped in toward the building and opened a side door. It was completely dark inside, and moreover, no light from the street seemed to penetrate the threshold.

“In here,” he said in a flat voice.

Unfazed, Nate went first. Carter followed shortly after. I gave the Gardener a look meant to question without petulance, and he merely narrowed his eyes at me, pointing at the door.