Awakenings Page 5

  He faced her. With a stiff accusatory finger he said, “What did we say about the crazy talk?”

  Lelani bit her lip and remained quiet. She looked up and down the street, examining the crowd surrounding them.

  “Hey you!” Seth called to the detective. “The guy in the ambulance is … was my roommate.”

  “Sorry,” the detective said. “If it’s any consolation, Mr. Raincrest died quickly.”

  “I’m Raincrest. My roommate was Joe Rodriguez.”

  “Oh,” the detective said. He scribbled the correction into his notepad. “Good thing I hadn’t started the paperwork yet.”

  “What happened?”

  “Near as we can tell, the gas line erupted and a fireball engulfed the place. Took out your neighbors’ apartments, too. They said they heard some yelling and your name came up a few times. Maybe that’s why they thought it was you in the blast.”

  “Joe and I had a disagreement before I left, but we weren’t yelling. Maybe he was on the phone.”

  “Where were you?”

  “At a friend’s house. I was with her…” Seth realized that Lelani wasn’t behind him. She was scouring the crowd again.

  “Who?” the detective asked.

  “Her.”

  “The redhead?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “She a roommate, too?”

  “No, I just met her today. I think she escaped from Bellevue.”

  “Lucky you. Look, I can’t let you in yet. Once the Fire guys give the okay…”

  “Thanks.”

  Seth walked over to Lelani.

  “We should go now,” she repeated.

  “Hey, nutjob, my goddamn home was fireballed! I’m not going anywhere. I have to see what I can salvage.”

  “Do it quickly.”

  “We can’t, yet.”

  Lelani took him by the arm and led him toward the entrance. She mumbled as they walked. Seth expected to be stopped at any moment. They were already up the stairs before he realized they’d snuck through. When they got to his floor, she told the firemen they had permission to be there. The city workers handed them face masks.

  “How’d you do that?” Seth asked.

  “They teach us these things in Bellevue,” she said, with a wry smile.

  A gray haze saturated the room. Even through the mask, the acrid air made its way into his mouth and nose. Piles of black ash sat where walls once stood. Charred floorboards remained of varnished woodwork. They had to watch where they walked. Electrical wires dangled from the ceiling. Lelani hung back. Seth made his way to his studio. All the photos were melted into slag. His cameras were destroyed, his computer, his stockpile of film—everything was gone. A puddle of plastic sat where the phone used to be.

  “Motherfucking goddamn shit!” he yelled. “It’s gone! All of it! Everything I own is shit.” He shoved his fingers into his hair and balled his hands into fists. Seth was on the verge of crying, but didn’t want Red to see him that way, so he swallowed the pain and pushed it into his gut.

  Lelani pulled her compact out again. She held it before her and gingerly circled the room.

  “Why are you doing that now?” Seth demanded.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You just had that compact out ten minutes ago. Your face needs less work than anyone I know.”

  Lelani followed his line of sight to her hand. “I’m not putting on makeup,” she said. “I’m checking for residual … well, it’s more ‘crazy talk.’ I’ll spare you the details.” She handed him the device.

  It was a heavy, ornate brass disk. There was a concealed hinge on one side and a clasp opposite it. On the inner lid was a mirror, but not the cheap kind mass-produced by Revlon. This was the cleanest reflection Seth had ever seen, pure liquid silver, as though you could stick your hand through it to the room on the other side. On the inner base were a series of assorted gems, and lines of pearls embedded in the brass. Around the jewels were intricate designs and patterns etched into the metal. Some jewels blinked, others remained lit. They cast a laser-like grid onto the mirror. It looked like a Victorian-era version of a Palm Pilot.

  “What the hell is this thing? A tricorder? It must be worth a fortune.”

  “It’s hard to explain. Just think of it as a Geiger counter for now. The gas line did not cause this fire. The explosion was the result of an attack. I’m quite certain you were the target.”

  “Oh, here we go again.”

  “Listen, before you lecture me; I’ve come a long way to find you—not to insult your intelligence, not to make your life miserable, not to start a friendship, but to help you discover yourself and in so doing, help my cause. I don’t want money and I don’t want pity for my mental state. I understand what you are going through … the loss of a home and friends is a terrible thing. I know because I have lost my own home.”

  Her fierce sincerity almost succeeded in making Seth forget she was a nutjob.

  “I don’t know what to make of you,” he said. “And I don’t have time to figure it out. My roommate’s dead. My home’s a cinder. I might be sleeping on a park bench tonight.”

  “Then perhaps I can give you some practical help. I have a room on Twenty-third Street. You can stay with me until you decide your next step.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “You accompany me to the Bronx. I have to find someone. This attack means that my timetable has been shortened. I can’t leave you alone.”

  “Screw that.” Seth dug out a tin box from the burned out closet. Inside were two twenty-dollar bills and a ten. “Who has time to trek up to the Bronx? All I have to do is get to a pay phone.” Then he stormed out of the remains of his apartment.

  4

  Seth bought a five-dollar phone card at Mr. Cho’s. By four thirty, the sun was sliding past the horizon and a cold drizzle replaced the snow, washing away the pristine blanket of white. Seth had only a dollar credit left on the card. He was still struggling to find a place to stay. A few friends offered to put up the cat who slept peacefully on the stoop. Lelani stood at a respectable distance from the deli payphone. Seth knew she wasn’t there for moral support.

  “Hi Earl. I need a favor … can I crash with you tonight? No, Kevin’s still away on his honeymoon. Why not? She’s still pissed at me? Look, I’m in dire straits, man. My place burned down. I’ll sleep on the floor. C’mon, she’s not even your wife. You’re gonna pick a chick over your bud? Yeah, thanks a lot, man. Happy fucking holidays to you, too.” Seth slammed the pay phone. “Asshole.”

  “He’s being unreasonable?” Lelani asked, breaking her silence.

  Seth’s first instinct was to tell her to buzz off, but he realized her offer of shelter was the only option on the table at the moment. It was looking better with each call.

  “No.”

  “Then why would he not…?”

  “I sold photos of his girlfriend to the amateur section of a few nude magazines—without permission. She got drunk at a party and stripped. Got off on my taking photos of her.”

  “Hmmm?” Lelani murmured.

  “I gave her half the money. She’s hot. It was a good way for me to get noticed at these publications. She needed the cash because she was about to get evicted from her apartment.”

  “Clearly, she has no sense of gratitude. So you photograph nude women for cheap periodicals?”

  Seth regretted bringing it up. He heard condescension creeping back into Lelani’s voice.

  “I don’t photograph anything anymore. I’m out of business. My cameras, my archives, a thousand dollars’ worth of film, all gone. Even the graces of my employer … gone. I missed an important deadline today.”

  Seth picked up the phone and dialed another number.

  “No one will help you,” Lelani said.

  “I’m getting that, yeah. Did you cast a spell on me?”

  “You do not inspire loyalty within your circles.”

  Once again Seth made his appeal on the phone, t
his time to an ex-girlfriend who always needed money. He offered to pay her rent and then heard the click of the disconnect.

  “Why is this happening to me?” he wailed.

  “You have disappointed these people once too often. They feel no allegiance to you.”

  Again, Seth suppressed the urge to punch her out. He considered a homeless shelter, but knew he’d never make it out by morning with the few dollars he had left.

  “These friends of yours, did they know your roommate as well?” she asked.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “You did not mention his death. Not even once.”

  Seth realized she had a point. Concentrating on his own problems, he had neglected to mention Joe’s death to anyone. What was worse, he couldn’t undo it. His friends would be furious at him once they learned about it. The chasms he had just discovered expanded faster than his ability to bridge them. He had helped foster this shortage of goodwill toward him through the years. Joe probably put in a lot of effort on his behalf into soothing the rifts among their friends. Now his advocate was dead and he had yet to shed a tear. Add in a crazy woman’s accusation that he was partly responsible for Joe’s death—a case of mistaken identity—and his shame only deepened. He sat on the stoop in front of the deli stroking Hoshi’s neck. No progress had been made since his eighteenth birthday, he was still alone, and he couldn’t blame the fire this time.

  “Come with me and you’ll have a place to sleep tonight,” Lelani offered. “Do it for the cat.”

  “At this point,” Seth said, “I don’t have anything more to lose, right?”

  Lelani remained quiet for a moment. Then she offered her hand and helped him off the stoop. “We’ll drop the cat off at my room, first,” she said.

  “Uh—I don’t have anything more to lose, right…?” Seth repeated.

  “Certainly,” she answered—but would not look him in the eye.

  CHAPTER 3

  THREE-RINGED CIRCUS MAXIMUS

  1

  The man with the yellow eyes dropped from the ceiling and knocked the pistol out of Cal’s hand. Cal tried to twist away in time, but found himself pinned under this strange person with oozing pores. Sharp talons slashed at him and tore his bulletproof vest. Cal couldn’t get any leverage. Every way he twisted, the assailant was able to twist just as far. His assailant’s proportions were off, as though his limbs were stretched beyond human capability; the lack of sleep must have been screwing with Cal’s perceptions. Although he couldn’t get free of the perp’s viselike grip, Cal was stronger and could move the attacker’s limbs wherever he brought his own arm, so he brought the full force of his steel-jacketed Maglite against his attacker’s head. The man yowled and fell off.

  Cal rolled out from under the man-thing and quickly checked the cuts on his face and chest. His attacker now stood between him and the hallway. That little bit of distance between them gave the officer his first full view of the creature. It looked gaunt and emaciated, its skin dolphin gray, but it was essentially a person, albeit disfigured, and there was an intelligence in its gaze. It had no intention of letting him leave. He scanned the floor for his gun, but it had fallen into the darkness. There was no time to search. He quickly pulled out his nightstick and stood up.

  “You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer!” Cal shouted. “Please, feel free to do this the hard way.”

  The yellow-eyed perp smiled. Cal was perplexed when it attempted to throw a punch from ten feet away. He was more confused when the fist actually connected with his jaw. Just as his vision cleared, he could see the creature’s arm snapping back to its former proportion. This isn’t sleep deprivation, Cal thought. Whatever it was, the assailant moved like it was triple-jointed and stretched better than his wife’s yogi.

  They circled, trying to decide their next move. The gray man never relinquished his position at the doorway. It didn’t run, even though the element of surprise was gone, and this worried Cal. He was much larger than his attacker, and despite its unique abilities, this thing was not as strong as he was. Something else occurred to Cal. This assailant did not match the description of the suspect. It was waiting for backup! It was stalling.

  Cal lunged, swinging the nightstick hard. The man-thing ducked, avoiding the blow. Instead of bringing the nightstick back around, Cal brought the Maglite in his other hand down, smashing it into the top of the man-thing’s skull. Then he backhanded his nightstick into the assailant’s face to finish the job.

  The creature crumpled to the floor, groggy with pain. Cal snapped his handcuffs around the thing’s wrists. The attacker had residue on his skin, like the sticky stuff he had touched earlier. It had an acrid organic smell. He searched the floor with his light and recovered his gun.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Cal recited. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  The officer continued reciting Miranda while shoving his prisoner into the hallway. Crossing the threshold, he caught a glimpse of someone from the corner of his eye and raised his Maglite in time to deflect a sword from cleaving him in two. Sparks flew as old steel met new steel. Cal could tell from the force of the blow that this new attacker, a bronze-skinned swordsman dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, was Mack-truck strong.

  Cal pushed his prisoner down the stairs, grabbed his steel-jacketed Maglite like a rolling pin and warded off a second thrust head-on only to find himself holding half of the cleaved flashlight in each hand. Cal drove a hard kick into the assailant’s solar plexus. The swordsman went down gasping for breath. Then Cal kicked him in the head. He was going for his pistol again when the little gray man grabbed him from behind. Its arms, free of the manacles, wrapped around Cal like a snake. They continued to coil until Cal was bandaged tight, his right arm pinned underneath. Then, the gray man bit him in the neck.

  Cal lunged backward, smashing into the corner of the door frame repeatedly until the arms loosened. Reaching over his own head with his left hand, Cal grabbed the gray man by the scruff of his neck, then leaned forward, pulled his attacker over him, and slammed him hard into the floor at his feet. The swordsman came at him again. Cal picked up the gray man like a shield just in time to block a thrust, which came through the gray man’s rib cage just under the heart. The man bled blue. Shocked by the act of piercing his associate, the bronze man hesitated. Cal pushed the gray man toward his friend, giving him the second he needed to pull his service revolver.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve to ambush a cop!” Cal yelled. “You guys on drugs?”

  The swordsman propped his companion against the wall and pulled out his blade. The gray man coughed dark ink. He held his side where blue liquid seeped into his shirt from the wound.

  “I can get an ambulance here in minutes,” Cal said. “Put down your weapons.”

  “Symian will be fine,” the swordsman man said, with no indication of haste. “His kind’s constitution is different than ours. Like stabbing putty.” It did not look that way to the gray man, who was in great pain, but declined to object. The swordsman kept his weapon between himself and Cal.

  “Put the weapon down!” Cal repeated.

  “Time has done you justice, my captain. If you had fought this well in Aandor, the city would have never fallen.”

  Cal thought the bronze man mentioned something familiar, but he had trouble wrapping his mind around all these events. Guys with swords. Gray men with blue blood that clung to ceilings and contorted like they had bones of rubber—nothing in Cal’s training had ever prepared him for this. These attackers have climbed out of a Cirque Du Soleil sideshow. Maybe the butter cookies the old lady had given him were spiked. If this was the new breed of perp, the NYPD was in serious trouble.

  “We should have waited for Hesz,” the gray man said, through a fit of coughs. “Captain MacDonnell is formidable.”

  “I haven’t even made lieutenant,” Cal interjected. “You morons don’t even have the right cop.”

  “
That’s what you think,” the gray man said in a raspy, guttural voice.

  Cal was confused. Being called “captain” had a familiar ring. Aandor? Things were making less sense by the minute. This mess was just a routine call over a trespasser. But these perps knew things Cal didn’t even realize he knew until they spoke them aloud.

  Cal’s eyes went wide. Oh my God! My dreams. He stood there frozen with his gun trained on them, wondering if this was a dream. Was he really still in the cruiser, dozing, as Erin blasted Tito Puente from the stereo?

  Cal never heard the person creep up behind him. A hulking figure in a black fedora slapped the gun out of his hand and grabbed him by the throat. The giant’s irises were blue as a Siberian husky’s. His cold breath numbed Cal’s face. Cal punched the man in the jaw and nearly broke his hand. The giant lifted the officer off the ground with one arm and crashed him against the wall. Cal slumped to the ground against the door frame.

  “Dorn said to wait for me. You are lucky to be alive,” the giant said in a voice that rolled like thunder.

  “Not at all,” said the gray man. “It never even occurred to him to kill us. Thirteen years have taken the edge off the good captain.”

  Spots appeared before Cal. He concentrated on the new assailant’s deep baritone voice and tried not to black out. The man had to be close to eight feet. He had a jutting jaw and heavy brows. His lips were like two fat bloodworms copulating. His nose was broad, his bottom teeth protruded, and stuck out even when his mouth was closed. They were speaking in a foreign language he never studied, yet he understood every word. The giant called them Symian and Kraten. They called him Hesz. Cal committed the names to memory.

  Kraten found Cal’s wallet and pulled a photo from it. “MacDonnell has a woman,” he said, showing the picture to his cohorts. “And a brat. Many will find that very intriguing back home,” he said with a grin.

  “He does not even know who he really is,” Symian continued. “Besides, if we had guns this would have been easier.”

  “No!” said Kraten. “I’m a warrior. I want to touch death through my sword. Bolts are for children and archers.”