Nightwise (14 page)

“What was it? Was it a spell? A charm? Something they were trying to summon? What?” I asked. As much as I just wanted to find Dusan Slorzack and end this, there was that itch in my back of my skull, a scrap of knowledge, of power, I didn't have, and I wanted it. Revenge for Boj was the last thing on my mind as I leaned closer.

“Greenway,” Trace said. “They called it the Greenway.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“I don't have a clue and I don't care if I never know,” Trace said, “especially after what they did … for it.”

A chill wormed its way through my guts. “What did they do, Alex?” I asked softly.

Trace looked around and lowered his voice when he spoke. “They … they were both in on it, what happened … back in 2001.”

“You're serious,” I said. “I heard a rumor, but come on, man, really?”

“They helped plan it. Slorzack and James and … someone else. They worked with the terrorists. There was lots of money and magic involved. Slorzack and James planned out some kind of working. They said it had to be that specific day, because of the numbers or something, and the targets…”

“You are telling me that Dusan Slorzack and James Berman were behind nine/eleven?” I said.

A few people on the train turned in my direction when they heard. While the default in this town is unflappable, there are some words that always hold power in the proper places, still maintain an emotional connection, for good or bad, like a live wire.

“Yeah. I heard them working one night, and they said it was necessary for whatever the Greenway was.”

“Do you remember exactly what they said?” I asked. The train lurched again as we continued north, passing into shadow and then light, falling into shadow again.

“They said the towers were the pillars of the temple, a symbol of wealth and power that had to be sacrificed to open the way. They said the Pentagon was the ‘sacred star' or some shit. Something about the White House being sacrificed too—and Shriners or something?”

“Masons,” I said. “Maybe Masons.”

“Yeah, Masons. Once James was mixed up in that, I got really scared. Especially when it actually fucking happened. I mean, what kind of mind can kill all those people for some insane rite?”

“Slorzack,” I said. “He's had plenty of practice at it.”

“Whoever was mixed up in it with them, I think that person directed things,” Trace added. “James seemed to know them better than Slorzack.”

“Mystery scumbags have a name?” I asked. In the back of my head I felt a movement across the city, a stirring of my instinct to flee, to hide. The Inugami pack was on the move again.

“Like I said, I really didn't want to have anything to do with any of this,” Trace said, shaking his head. “Fucking insanity. Wait. Gerry? Giles? Giles. Yes, James slipped once and used his name. Giles.”

“Well, it's better than nothing,” I said.

“Before they did … what they did, James asked me a lot of questions about my work at the Fed. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with what Slorzack was after.”

“What did Berman want to know about?” I asked.

“Printing and engraving,” Trace said. “The history of it, what happened to the old engraving die plates for money once they were retired.”

“What do they do with them?” I asked.

“They are in vaults at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington,” Trace said. “Those master dies are used to make the printing plates that are used on the presses to produce money.”

“Why the hell did he want to know about that?” I asked.

Trace shrugged. “He was interested in that shit from the time we met. He and Slorzack actually traveled to D.C. to do the tourist thing. Part of my job at the Fed is to coordinate the shipments of damaged and worn-out currency once it's taken out of circulation. I know a lot of people at Engraving and Printing. I got them full access.”

There was a long pause, the train shuddered and rocked.

“How long after you met Berman did you two bump into Dusan Slorzack?”

“A few months,” Trace said. He looked up, turned, and stared at me. I shut up. My inner paranoid bastard had already run through the scenario in my mind. I hoped Trace's hadn't. The man he loved was dead, and I had just pissed all over his memory. Something crossed his face like a cloud drifting across the sun. Then it was gone.

“What happens to me now that you got my whole story?” Trace said. “You going to kill me, cut me loose?”

“No,” I said. “You held up your end, for all your screaming and freaking out. I'll get you out of the city and find a safe place for you to hole up. We're square.”

Trace nodded. “Thank you. Thanks.”

“Don't thank me yet,” I said. “We need to banish the Inugami before they find us again. I can already sense them getting closer. We got a few more stops till Times Square.”

“Why Times Square?” Trace asked. I didn't answer. I needed supplies.

I stood. Between the swaying of the train and the numbness and ache in my legs, it was hard not to just fall back into my seat. I had lost most of my goodies with the trench coat, and if I was going to locate what I needed to be able to end this, I would have to rely on the kindness of strangers. I walked up to a guy in a very nice Hugo Boss two-button, slim-fit suit. He was sitting, earbuds from his iPod jammed in his head, reading
Forbes.
He had a raincoat and a leather satchel next to him. He looked to be in his early thirties and seemed comfortable with a look of soft disdain on his narrow face. I stood in front of him, holding the overhead rail to steady myself.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I was wondering if I might have a pen and a piece of paper, please. It's kind of urgent.”

He pretended to ignore me and kept listening to his music and reading his magazine. I pushed the magazine down with one hand while keeping the other clamped on the rail. He looked up, glaring at me. I saw the fear peeking out too, but he was trying to hide it well.

“Excuse me,” I repeated.

He popped an earbud out. “What?” he growled. Somehow I managed to not swoon in fear.

“A piece of paper and a pen. May I have those, please? It's an emergency,” I said.

He scowled and opened his satchel and rooted around.

“It's always an emergency,” he grumbled. “People like you make me sick.”

“People like me?” I said.

“I work my ass off to have the things I do,” he said. “People like you think everything just falls outta the freakin' sky.”

“I see,” I said, nodding. “And what do you do, exactly?”

“I work on Wall Street,” he said. “In banking, if it's any of your business.”

“Mmhhmm,” I said, taking the piece of notebook paper he ripped out of small Moleskine notebook. He handed it to me like I had a disease. “Teller?”

He stopped his search for a pen and looked up at me, his eyes narrowed, burned.

“Maybe collections?” I said. “You enjoy taking old women's last dollars to cover the fees you shit on them? You like tricking and lying to people about how much you care about them, their family, and their future, and then rape them and take that future away.

“You bust your ass for your company, and you are caged up in a little box, like a dog waiting to be euthanized. You make them millions every day and you can't afford a car, a parking spot downtown? You live in a shit hole apartment and feel the ulcer burn into your guts every night because you can't pay your own damn credit card bills to keep up the kind of life you get told you should be living, but you hound people every day for not paying their bills, for doing the same damn thing. Went into debt for that suit, didn't you? Are you a good dog? That how you make your living, Bubba?”

“Fuck you, you white trash bum,” he spat. I smiled.

“Pen,” I said. “Please. You can get another free one at the bank.”

He tossed it at me and I caught it. He flipped me off as I walked back to my seat and then put his earbud back in.

The truth is I am a bum and a criminal and a villain, and very proud to be white trash, but I'd rather eat out of a Dumpster and sleep on a subway vent than be a bottom-feeder like Mr. iPod. There is no intrinsic nobility in poverty, I assure you, but there damn sure isn't any in wealth, either.

“You enjoy that?” Trace asked quietly.

“Yeah, I did,” I said, smoothing out the paper on the dry parts of the bench. “You?”

“My pops worked for a company for thirty years,” Trace said, looking down at the floor. “Long days, short nights. No vacations. More work, more responsibility, not much more pay. Too tired to read to me, to play with me. Always saying he had to be perfect, had to not give them any reason to call him a shiftless nigger, to whisper behind his back. Being a paragon is damn hard on a man, can kill you.

“I missed him so much, and then I kind of hated him for it, like it meant more to him than me. He was just trying to do right by me and Mom, trying to win a rigged game. He dropped dead at work, and the people he had given his life for didn't give a damn. They replaced him, gave the job to someone right out of college for half the pay, like changing a spark plug. I think we got a fruit basket after the funeral.

“When Mom got sick, they did everything they could to drop her from the insurance Pops had paid into for most of his adult life. The creditors hounded her, made her sicker. She died a nervous wreck about the bills she still owed to millionaires. James was the only thing I had in my world beside my job at the Fed. I realized when they told me he was gone that I had nothing anymore. Just the job, just like Pops.”

“Not too late to change that,” I said. “It's your life, free and clear.”

Trace smiled and looked at the pissed-off Mr. iPod. “Yeah,” he said. “I did enjoy that.”

The trick to dowsing is to free your mind to the compass of instinct. I knew the place I wanted to go, and I knew we were close. I didn't have a witching rod—those Y-shaped sticks dowsers traditionally use, or a pendulum, or even a ring on a chain, so I had to make do with some automatic writing tricks I picked up. I put my waking mind away. The rocking rhythm of the train actually helped with that. It took a few moments. The last conscious thought was of the wave of hunger and confusion from the dog gods that hit me like a power washer full of acid. My hand jerked and shifted across the paper. Then, trance over. I blinked and looked at the paper. We had our map.

I tossed the pen back to Mr. iPod as Trace and I departed the train at the 42nd Street stop.

“Much obliged,” I said, and kept on walking.

*   *   *

After the train roared and squealed away into the tunnel, I examined the map I had drawn and pointed after the train into the darkness.

“There,” I said. I could feel a pressure in the back of my skull, a flare of my Ajna chakra. The pack was coming, drawing closer.

“Into the tunnel?” Trace said. “If we don't get electrocuted, or break our necks jumping down, the MTA cops will—”

“Have you noticed an overabundance of cops interested in us at all today?” I asked as I walked to the edge of the tunnel. “Do you have a key on you?”

“What, your cult cops?” Trace said, digging into the pockets of his still-damp raincoat. “They ordered to leave us alone?” He handed me a small key ring. I slid one key off the loop and handed it back to him.

“Maybe,” I said, “but we start mucking around down here, and they may get interested real quick. Be ready for that. You're not going to ask me what the key is for?”

“Figure some messed-up shit you're going to show me presently,” Trace said. “Why bother?”

“Good,” I said. “You're learning.”

The gravel that surrounded the tracks at the edge of the tunnel crunched as we dropped down. I held the map and started walking. There was a narrow ledge with a rail on either side of the tunnel, and we shimmied up. It was cold and windy in the darkness. A row of feeble yellow lights in oval metal cages were strung along the wall. It was enough for me to read the directions and images my back brain had scrawled onto the paper.

“Maybe we can get directions, if we get lost,” I said as the warm circle of light from the tunnel entrance grew smaller and became a moon, then an eye that finally closed, and it was as if we were in deep space.

“That's not funny,” Trace said, looking around nervously.

“Not intended to be,” I said. “There're about six thousand mole people living down here, have whole societies and cultures.”

“You're talking about some kind of mole creatures living down here, right?” Trace said. I stopped and looked at him.

“No, I'm talking about human beings,” I said. “They just call them mole people.”

“Under New York? That's just weird, man,” Trace said. “Urban myth.”

“As real as it gets,” I said. “No telling how many died down here during Hurricane Sandy. No myth. Just people trying to live, to stay alive, the way people do.”

I went back to walking and following the magic map.

It took some time. We reached cross corridors and junctions, narrow metal stairs leading down. The only light was from the screen of Trace's cell phone. I insisted he disable the GPS in it. No mole people showed up, but we did encounter plenty of rats. Eventually we found the door, just as the map said we would. It was a heavy steel security door with an outdated Con Ed logo stamped into it. It was secured by a heavy chain and padlock. I dug Trace's key out of my jeans pocket, knelt before the padlock, and held the key in front of my eye.

“Obfirmo aperire,”
I said. The lock resisted my spell and remained closed. I narrowed my eyes and rubbed my chin. There was a counterspell on the lock, designed to keep someone from doing what I had just tried to do.

“Why Latin?” Trace asked.