Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods (5 page)

CHAPTER

SIX

T
o my dismay, though not to my surprise, we could not locate my sister. An hour later, as the sun began to sink behind the Manhattan skyline, we gave up on the search. For the time being, at least.

I walked with Antoinette back to her store and helped her with some cleaning. Each time I looked at her, I remembered how she had saved me, how I’d failed to be strong enough on my own. I, a child of the Greene clan, the second eldest, able to challenge for the role of scion, if I ever thought I could best my sister Esther in a duel. It was embarrassing. Not to be saved by a woman, or a stranger, but to be saved at all.

Surprisingly, Antoinette cued up loud and heavy music as we cleaned.

“What is this?” I asked, remembering to be polite. I’d wanted to ask
What is this crap you call music?
but that would hardly be fitting.

“Queensrÿche,” she said, loading books onto a slim dolly. “Do you see D’Sarvin’s
Fluc
tuations in the Mist
anywhere?”

I scanned the covers and spines of the texts before me, then crouched down and retrieved a thick book with a green cover and silvered lettering.

“Here,” I said, handing the book over. “What will you do with the store?”

Antoinette sighed, setting the text onto the stack. “Hell if I know. It’s not like I can abandon it. Then everything will get stolen. I don’t make enough to hire someone to work for me. And I definitely don’t have enough money to repair all this damage,” she said, gesturing to the broken glass, the shattered shelves, and the mangled books.

“I cannot offer financial assistance, but I will support your efforts.” I checked my watch, realizing I’d spent most of a day away from schoolwork. Were it another part of the semester, it would be easy to let things slide. But the group project needed to be completed, even if I was a group of one. If my grades faltered, my scholarships would be endangered. That worry seemed paltry compared to the danger Esther posed, but it did not eliminate the threat.

“I’ll get it cleaned up, and call some friends in the neighborhood to keep an eye out. Word’s out to the guardians of the Hearts, so everyone’s going into lockdown mode.”

Weighing options and obligations, I knew that dithering and whining about how hard my life was would not solve either of my problems. But without further resources, every additional hour trying to track Esther would be far less useful than getting my work done. If I could get ahead, I’d be able to allot the rest of the week to stopping her, work-study shifts aside. As Antoinette started to respond, I continued. “I’m sorry, I must get back to my own work. What is the best way to contact you to continue searching for Esther?”

The shopkeep stared at me for a moment, then said, “Call my cell.” She pulled a pen out of a coffee cup and jotted a number down on a scrap of paper.

“Don’t bother calling after eleven, or seven on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have derby.”

“You race horses?” I asked. It seemed an unlikely hobby for a New Yorker, especially one with self-professed financial limitations.

“Roller derby,” she said. “With roller skates?”

I shrugged. “Don’t call after seven on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Understood. The most pressing matter is discerning where she will go next, and how to intercept her.”

“Roger that,” Antoinette said.

Uncertain what the appropriate conversational closing formula was, I nodded, turned, and walked out.

A 2-train ride later, I returned to my dormitory and was infinitely relieved to see no indicator of carnality on the doorknob. I rattled my keys out of habit, and opened the door to see Carter sitting atop his bed, talking on the phone.

His eyes widened upon seeing me, and he covered the microphone with his free hand.

“Five minutes?” he asked, his voice higher, tight.

I pointed back into the hall. Did he want me to leave?

Carter nodded. I pulled the door closed as I stepped back into the hall.

In the common room, I would have to focus on schoolwork. Research would have to wait. I did not need floormates inquiring about the manuscripts bound in human flesh or about the intricate drawings of ritual circles.

Not that I had that much in the way of such resources. Antoinette had loaned me a bagful of texts that constituted my best chance at discerning what items Esther would need for the second and third rituals, but it barely scratched the surface.

Time was of the essence, but I had also not eaten since breakfast.

Bowing to biological necessity, I made for the food court.

Two chicken wings, countless spoonfuls of dopamine-inducing carbohydrates, and a large iced tea later, I had broken the back of the group project, powering through the needful work.

From there, I turned to research, picking a back corner of the food court and reading with texts settled in my lap.

Before long, I had a rough concept of what Esther might need to proceed. Just enough idea to know that I’d need to rely on Antoinette and her local connections.

First, Esther would need to identify the ley lines, the flows of power moving through the city. Then she would need to find the Heart which drew upon those lines. She would need all five in order to harness enough energy to open the portal to the bowels of the earth.

Upon my return to the dorm room, Carter seemed to have not only concluded his call, but departed the room entirely.

Savoring the privacy, I produced my schoolwork and continued with the group project.

Several hours later that evening, the dormitory phone rang.

“Ahoy,” I answered.

“Ahoy?” Against all odds and past experiences, the caller was not one of Carter’s innumerable girlfriends (he seemed to never give them his cell number), but Antoinette.

“It was Alexander Graham Bell’s preferred salutation upon the invention of the telephone.”

“That’s nice. Here’s the scoop. The only things my mom’s friends know that could draw enough power to open the portal you’re talking about are the Hearts of the Boroughs.”

“As I suspected. How may we help defend them? Without tracking Esther, that seems the only useful response.”

Antoinette sighed. “That’s the rub. Since they’re incredibly powerful, the factions that control them do their damnedest to keep the things under wraps. I don’t like our odds of being able to stroll around town and just casually inquire about the five most powerful artifacts in the city. They keep their own company, pretty much.”

“But they have been warned, yes?” I asked.

“I put out the word, but I have direct connection to only two of them.”

“Which?”

“Brooklyn and Manhattan. And I know people who know the groups in Queens. But that’s it. The Bronx keeps its own company, and I don’t know the folks in Staten Island. But here’s the thing: The Williamsburg Chantry just got totaled.”

“Oh. As in, this evening?”

“As in right now. One of my friends is a couple blocks away, and she can hear the fighting.”

“I’m on my way,” I said, lowering the phone.

“Wait!”

I took a breath and raised the receiver again.

“You’ll never get there in time. It doesn’t sound like the Chantry is winning. This could be another trap.”

“Certainly. Or we could be needed to assist the reconstruction and triage.”

“It’s your time. What happened to studying?” Antoinette asked.

“I have done enough for now. And recent developments have put the scale of the problem into sharp relief. Where should I go?”

“Take the 7 to the G to Broadway, then go to Hewes Street and head southwest. You won’t be able to miss it. You have a cell?”

“I am composed of many cells. I lack a mobile telephone.”

“All right, Captain Particularity. If you want to do any good, you better hurry.”

“Farewell.” I hung up the phone and grabbed my bag, then quit the dormitory as fast as I could manage without causing alarm.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

I
should have been studying. Or sleeping, readying my mind and body for the next day. The day I’d inevitably come to blows with my elder sister, the woman who had been like a third parent to me, whose power had always eclipsed my own, and who knew me almost as well as I knew myself.

Instead, I was on the G train.

In the short time I’d spent living in New York, I’d quickly learned of the reputation of the G train. It was full of weirdos. Being one who fit the description of “weirdo,” this did not faze me. I’d seen youths in sweatclothes and well-worn baseball caps swing and spin about on E trains, display recklessness and athleticism both. I’d seen armless and legless veterans begging for alms on the 6 train.

The G was just another train. But on that evening, it was packed.

Life in North Dakota had completely failed to prepare me for the sardine-esque feeling of being in a not-even-standing-room train. I’m told Tokyo is worse, with official transit employees whose job it is to pack people into the trains. I did not envy those workers or commuters, but it did little to assuage my previously-undiagnosed-but-increasingly-emergent claustrophobia.

I nearly toppled an aged woman as I fought my way out of the train at the Broadway stop, and hurried out of the station into the welcoming cold of the open air. I stopped for a precious few moments to breathe and let the tide of anxiety recede.

When my heart had ceased pounding like hail on a roof, I moved on.

As Antoinette had said, it was impossible not to know where to go.

Along a street of homes in similar styles but varying facades, one building had been reduced to rubble. The wreckage extended across the street. The light of several fire trucks illuminated the street, which was thick with emergency responders and civilians. Several news trucks were parked at the edge of the scene, flanked by a pretty blonde woman talking to over-the-shoulder cameras.

And me without a way to contact Antoinette directly, as working pay phones were not common in the city.

I made my way through the unorganized crowd closer to the fire trucks, trying to paint a picture of what had happened. I stepped past the newscasters, withdrawing my presence to try to pass unnoticed.

Firefighters and EMTs were still shuttling people into ambulances positioned at the edge of the scene. I stepped over the shattered third of a porcelain bathtub and saw a policewoman step out of the flow of people to hail me.

“Excuse me. I need you to step away.”

Duplicity was far from my strong suit. Especially extemporaneous duplicity. So I couched my lie within the best truth I had.

“I think a friend of mine is in there,” I said.

“Sorry, sir. I need everyone to stay back,” the cop said in a voice that was mostly boredom but had a touch more annoyance than before.

“May I be of assistance?”

The cop sat back on her heels, her attention passing from me to watch the whole crowd behind me. “You have any certifications?”

“No, but—”

“Sorry, sir. Please step back and let the emergency responders do their job.”

I stepped back, but continued scanning the crowd, looking for Antoinette. And just in case, for Esther. She was not the sort to stay behind and revel in her work. That was more Father’s style.

Several minutes went by, and a newscaster appeared in front of me, seeking to shove a microphone down my throat like a mother bird force-feeding its young.

I stepped back and brushed the microphone away as the woman asked, “Do you live here, sir? Know anyone who lives here?” I lifted the mask I strained to keep over my disdain for inanity and leveled a disapproving gaze at the woman. She wilted under the look and broke off, pouncing on another bystander.

How could I help? It might be possible to slip behind the building, to climb the fire escape, to travel overland, or just to sneak through the backyards, hoping that everyone was out on the street instead of watching out of their windows.

I picked my way out of the crowd and looped around the block. Unfortunately, the alleyways were closed with ten-foot-tall gates, topped with wrought-iron barbs that curled out into the street. And at the opposite end of the cross street, it seemed that the fire escapes on the fronts of the buildings were deemed sufficient.

So my choices were to try to scale the gate with bystanders or to try to evade the notice of hundreds by scaling a fire escape on the block itself.

Wishing for once that there were fewer police in New York, I considered my options.

If I could not locate Antoinette, I could summon a local spirit and try to convince it to find her, gather intelligence, or assist the emergency responders.

Taking another inventory of my borrowed supplies, I despaired at the thought of trying to summon and bind a foreign spirit in an area that had so recently been agitated. The spiritual residue of the conflict was thick in the air. There was a feeling of disruption that it seemed even the civilians could feel, and the spirits would feel it even more intensely.

From behind me, I heard, “Jake?”

I whipped around, my heart racing. The tension bled back out as I saw Antoinette, approaching with a cluster of three other women. Two had sturdy builds; another was short and slight but well muscled. They were all wearing multicolored tights, but also wore underwear over the tights in what I took to be a traditional roller-derby style. One was East Asian, one Hispanic, the other black, a cross section of the famous diversity of the city.

They were also equipped with hard pads on their knees and elbows, as if they were preparing for brightly-colored urban warfare. Each of them carried a bag over her shoulder, and both Antoinette and the slight woman had roller skates slung over the opposite shoulder, the laces tied together.

This could only be the derby of which she spoke earlier. I’d meant to research it further, but it was far from the top of my priority list.

“Are you all right?” I asked. Antoinette looked bruised and sweaty.

“It’s just practice,” she said.

“Who’s this guy?” asked one of the sturdy women.

“Customer at the store. He’s helping me find the bitch who wrecked the place.”

“You a cop or something?” the slight woman asked.

“No. But I know the culprit. Antoinette, they won’t let me in to help. I need to help, and they won’t let me do anything.”

Antoinette sighed. “Let the police handle it. I can make introductions later.”

“I didn’t come all the way down here just to be a helpless bystander,” I said, my voice firm.

Antoinette shrugged. “I told you not to come. You wasted your own time.”

I cracked my knuckles and felt my face go hot. At home, when something went wrong, everyone pitched in. When an Exxeven broke the binding circle three years back, everyone leapt to action, wielding warded blades and gem-laden nets, and shouting incantations to force the being out before it could erode the walls and collapse the house.

Collapse the house
. Had Esther loosed an Exxeven? Once loosed, the Watchers had little desire to return to the depths. If there was one loose in Brooklyn, there would be more deaths tonight.

“Do you know what caused the collapse? If it’s an Exxeven, and it’s still loose . . .” I said, the hairs on the back of my neck standing at terrified attention. It had taken the whole family to corral the Watcher back into the circle and banish it. I was not up to the task by myself.

“We . . . should talk about this later,” Antoinette said, an odd tone to her voice.

I looked up and around, searching for the shadow against black of an Exxeven in the darkness. Millions of people in the city, countless voices to swallow and add to their cacophonous chorus.

“But what if it’s loose?” I reached into my bag for the jadeite. It would help me distinguish natural from preternatural colors, and perhaps pick out the Watcher if it was lingering nearby to feed upon the chaos.

Antoinette put a hand on my shoulder and spoke through gritted teeth. “We’ll talk about it later. Go home. The neighborhood takes care of its own.”

I took a breath, ready to make it clear that I was not going to abandon these people, but as I saw the odd looks from Antoinette’s companions, I realized that they did not know what had happened, likely did not know anything of the occult. She had partitioned her life, perhaps stepping away from her mother’s world, only to be dragged back in by her death and Esther’s arrival.

I sighed out the breath and nodded.

“Tomorrow morning. The store?”

She nodded. “See you later, Jake.”

The shopkeep returned to her companions and they headed off down the side street, avoiding the chaotic scene.

I took one look around with the jadeite in hand, just to be sure, then proceeded home, wishing I had brought my schoolwork with me to read on the trains.