Blood Day (20 page)

“Joshua,” she whispered breathlessly, the name belonging there on her lips. But how could that be? She looked into his face, and saw that it was not at all ordinary as she had thought. It was exotic and smooth and beautiful. She raised a hand and touched his cheek and he closed his eyes. He was not cold like Mathilde, his skin was so warm it felt feverish to the touch. He opened his eyes and opened his red, red lips. They glistened as if covered in liquid. Sia ran a thumb along his bottom lip and it came away red. Without thinking she brought her thumb to her mouth, licking the red away. It tasted metallic, rich, and sweet as honey.
 

“Sia,” he whispered, and she felt as though she could hear him say it a hundred, a thousand times and never be used to it.

“What's happening?” she said, unable to catch her breath, unable to tear her eyes away from him.
 

“It's time to remember,” he said. She screamed as he placed his hands on her head, her eyes burned and a light brighter than the sun seared the inside of her skull.
 

And she did remember. She remembered everything.

Seventeen

“Shit. Out of gas,” Dez said, kicking the bike. It teetered over and fell onto the asphalt with an anticlimactic thunk.
 

Mike shrugged.
 

“Just as well. They’ll be looking for it. Lila told them what we were driving.”

“I guess,” said Dez. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”

Mike looked around and realized they were near Washington Square. He pointed up the street.

“The old Post building is about four blocks that way,” he said. “My apartment building is about a half mile beyond it.”

“Well, let’s get going,” Dez said, casting a dark look at the motorcycle on the ground.
 

They walked for a long time, the silence hanging heavy in the air. Mike listened to their footsteps echoing on the ground. It was night now, and the most dangerous time to be out on the streets of a city he used to consider his. But it wasn't his any more. It was theirs now. Their city, their night, their world.
 

They came to the Post building and Mike stopped. He looked up at the dark windows, many of them broken, the tiny shards of broken glass glittering under the streetlight. Something had burst out of the building and pushed the glass out of those windows. He pushed the sparkling dust with his shoe and glared at the building. Everything that went wrong started and ended with this newspaper. Kyra died and he accepted that. He accepted almost anything to survive. But the news was sacred. It was beyond his reputation, his livelihood, the lives of his loved ones. He did not forgive himself for writing the Revs' propaganda. And he would never forgive Tess her treachery. He would spit on her grave if he had the chance.

“Mike,” Dez said in a whisper. Mike tore his eyes away from the building. Dez nodded across the street. A shadow moved in a breezeway. “I think someone’s watching us, mate.”

Mike looked at Dez, then back at the building. Then he walked up to the front door and pulled. It opened easily, to his surprise.

“What the hell are you doing, Mikey?” Dez said in a panicked whisper. “They’re watching us. We have to get the hell out of here.”

Mike looked into the darkness of the building. He shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, walking through the doorway. As he stood there, breathing in his building, his paper, his life, he realized Dez was behind him. He looked back and smiled. Dez shrugged.

They walked into the ground floor lobby area and stopped, their jaws gaping. In the middle of the floor…there was no floor. Mike looked up at the ceiling to see the gaping hole that went through to the very top of the building. A goddamn skyscraper and something had punched through every floor of the building. Mike looked down through the floor. The basement was plain below them, with a gargantuan hole punched through the concrete floor and into the earth. It smelled of dirt and snow and worms. Mike took a step back.

“What the hell is this?” said Dez.

“Joshua Flynn,” Mike said, his heart beating in his throat.

“We should go,” said Dez. “We shouldn’t be here, Mikey.”

But Mike was already skirting the hole in the floor and making his way to the staircase, slipping on some rubble once and hearing bits of the floor clatter onto the concrete below. Dez grabbed the back of Mike’s coat and pulled him away from the edge.

“Shit,” said Dez. “Intrepid reporter to the end.”

“Thanks,” said Mike. He found the stairs and they went down to the basement. Chunks of concrete blocked the other side of the door and it took both of their shoulders against it to force it open. With the screech of metal on stone, they finally managed to squeeze through. Mike walked in and stared at the hole in the floor, scratching his head.

“Jackhammer,” said Dez.

“What?”

“That’s what we use to get to the roots,” said Dez. “They teach us how to use them when we get our licenses.”

Mike nodded. “I forgot you were one of them,” he said.

“Just trying to get by,” said Dez.
 

“Yeah,” said Mike. “So it was a tree, then?”

“Yeah, creepy buggers. Black, stinking sap. We’re not supposed to tell people about them.”

“The kids said there were three,” said Mike.

“You really think the trees are Revs?” said Dez, crouching down by the hole and looking down. “Seems a bit far-fetched, don’t it?”

“We live in a world run by vampires, Dez.”

The man looked up at Mike and grinned.

“You make a fine point there, mate.” Dez dropped a handful of rubble down into the hole and Mike heard a dull clatter immediately. “Ain’t that deep,” said Dez.

Mike looked up as a sliver of light shone down on them. Part of the moon was visible from very far up.

“The ceiling’s gone,” said Mike. “We have moonlight.”

“So?” said Dez. But Mike had already sat on the edge of the hole and was lowering himself into it. “Oh, hell,” said Dez, and Mike could practically hear him rolling his eyes.
 

Mike fell when he dropped, rolling his ankle. He gave a little gasp of pain, but after moving it around for a bit, it eased up. Mike stood, trying his ankle tenderly.

“You okay?” Dez said.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” said Mike. “Just getting old.”

“Getting?” said Dez.

“Shut up, whippersnapper,” said Mike. He squinted around him. Nothing but dirt and steep walls of soil topped by jagged ridges of cement. The bottom of the pit was about the size of his old bathroom. Small, but big enough to move around in. He stepped from one side to the other. As he turned to go back again, something raked against the side of his thigh. Mike felt around in the dense, frozen ground and found something sharp poking out. It felt like a stick or a piece of root. He dug in his pocket and brought out the pocketknife he kept there. He opened the blade and started digging around the thing.

“What are you doing down there, Mikey?” said Dez.
 

“Found something,” said Mike. He moved the small blade carefully in and out of the frozen dirt, trying to dig the object out carefully without breaking his knife. After he’d gotten the earth out from around it as best he could, he folded the knife and put it in his pocket. Then he spit on his palms like he’d seen men do in the old movies and grabbed onto the wood, bracing his feet against the side of the hole. He pulled as hard as he could and the root gave a little. He fell onto his backside hard, but he got back up and tried again. With a sound like ripping hair, the root came out all at once and Mike just about whooped with excitement.

Settle down, old man,
he told himself.
It’s just a tree root.
But he wedged the root, two inches around and six inches long, into his belt.

“Help me back up, Dez,” he called.

It took a lot of clambering, slipping, and one fall on his ass, but finally Mike was able to climb up the side of the pit, helped by Dez using his leather jacket as a rope.
 

“What the hell is that?” said Dez, pulling his coat back on. Mike pulled the root out of his belt and held it in the moonlight. Something was dripping from it and, as Mike wiped his sticky hand on his pants, he realized he was covered in it. It seemed to be black in the moonlight, but it was hard to say in the watery light. Mike turned the piece of wood from side to side. It was knotty and lumpy in places, shapes seeming to try to burst from the grain of the wood.

“Mikey,” said Dez. “Is that…?”

Mike squinted in the light. The shapes resembled something vaguely rounded, something that almost looked like…

“Is that a goddamn toe?” said Mike after a long silence.

Dez took the stick in his hand and held it up to the light, his handsome face scrunching up to look at it. He pointed with his other hand.

“You can see the toenail there. And these are bones from a foot. Do you see?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah.”

“Mikey, you’re covered in Rev blood.”

“Jesus,” said Mike. He wanted to shower very badly.
 

“If they catch you like that, man,” said Dez. “I don’t even know what they’ll do.”

“Then I guess we’d better not get caught,” said Mike, smiling wanly. He felt dizzy.

“I mean, this is what you said, right?” said Dez. “You were right. The trees are Revs.”

“I didn’t really believe it myself,” said Mike. “I mean, I did, but it’s just so strange. How does this happen? What causes it?”

“I bet Flynn knows,” said Dez.
 

“I’m not going to go looking for him,” said Mike.
 

They heard footsteps above them and plaster dust rained on their heads. Mike and Dez flattened themselves against the wall just as a beam from a flashlight swept over the spot they had been standing a moment before.
 

“I don’t see anyone,” said a man’s voice. “You sure you saw them come in here?”

“Positive,” said a woman. “I’d know that turncoat anywhere. I worked with him for six months. The old guy looked like Novak, from the flyers.”

Mike looked at Dez whose eyes were panicked.

Mike touched the piece of wood at his side, felt the sticky black sap coming out of it. This wasn’t going to be the end. It couldn’t be. Unarmed, and cornered in a basement. Mike looked over at Dez again, but the coward appeared just as lost as he was.

“Shit,” Mike thought.

He would have to surrender. It was full time donor or nothing if he did. He touched the sharp end of the root in his belt. Was it sharp enough to pierce a vein? He could end it all before they caught him. But as he thought on it, he didn’t think he had the courage.
 

He thought of Kyra in her final moments.

Let me go, Michael. Please.

She was stronger than him, always had been. He told the police that she was dead when he found her. But that wasn’t the complete truth. The truth was she was almost blue when he found her. What blood she had left was pulsing weakly out of her neck and he was crying and putting pressure on the wound. He felt a cold, ghostly hand touch his wrist.

“Let me go, Michael,” Kyra gasped. “Please.”

And he had. He’d let her go. He removed his hand from her neck and the blood had come. And when he was arrested, he didn’t protest because he had as good as killed her. He had let Kyra die because he loved her and knew she was in Hell already. Losing the baby destroyed her. But he let it happen. The arrest was a punishment that he deserved, even if it was for the wrong crime. The lights went out as he sat alone in a cell. A few days later, emaciated and nearly dead from starvation, he’d been set free into a world he didn’t recognize. Into a world it hurt to be a part of, because it was the same world where he let her die.

Mike slowly eased the stick out of his belt and pushed the point against his neck. Could he do it? Could he end it all? He pushed a little harder.

“Mikey,” he heard Dez whisper. “Stop.”

There were footsteps on the stairs, heavy boots. Movers.

Mike held his breath and prepared himself. He couldn’t be a donor. It was worse than death.

But then there was an explosive bang that made his ears ring. The shot echoed hard in his skull and he felt Dez pull him to the floor as it came again.
 

“Stay down, Mikey,” Dez said.

Another shot, then another. The woman screamed and they heard the muffled sound of a body rolling down the stairs and thudding softly against the door. Then there were different footsteps. Soft and precise. The sound of metal on concrete again as someone pushed the door open.

“Tight spot, eh, Novak?” said a man’s voice, quietly.
 

Mike sat up and squinted as a hulking figure walked through the doorway and into the moonlight.

“Remember me?” he said, tipping his hat back with the muzzle of his gun. “You saved my life once, old man. Now we’re square.”

“Deacon’s man,” he said, recognizing him. “Matthew Blake.”
 

Blake holstered the gun and pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket. By the light of the match, Mike remembered telling him to run from Joshua Flynn at the puppet theater.
 

Mike could feel Dez start to say something and stop. Blake was a stone cold killer if he’d worked for Deacon. Dez knew what these men could do better than anyone. He’d wanted to be one of them. Mike guessed that his cowardice stopped him from rising in the ranks.

“What are you doing here?” Mike said, standing and brushing himself off.

“You’re all over the news, my friend,” said Blake, leaning against the door. “All the papers have your picture on the front page. It’s quite scandalous.”

“Mine?” said Mike.
 

“Your little resistance newspaper worked like a charm,” he said, tapping cigarette ash onto the floor and stepping on it with a well-shined shoe. “It’s got everyone up in arms. All the little well-behaved humans are now turning on the Revs. It’s glorious. The cops are hauling all the Revs they see off the streets and filling the empty jail cells with them. The Tribune even followed your lead and is printing real news stories. Not the Post of course, but they’ll join in when they see it works in their favor. Everyone’s clamoring to spend money on the black market, so it works well for me. I’m selling guns hand over fist. I can barely keep up with demand. Down in the depths of the nitty gritty, you have made me a very wealthy man.”