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  Then the silence was broken by a shuffling sound. heavy footfalls on concrete. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I clutched my sword until my knuckles went white. The blade’s persistent glow wavered in front of me.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered to Deacon. The noise came another time, closer, approaching from behind. He nodded, swung his light around, and froze in his tracks. A look of chagrined recognition filled his face.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter Two

  Deacon nodded over his shoulder, his hand on my arm. “I think someone’s here to crash our party.”

  I followed his gaze, and the surge of adrenaline resurfaced. On the subway stairs behind us, silhouetted against the light streaming down from the surface, a cluster of figures moved in our direction. There was something disturbingly familiar about the grey-white undertone to their skin and the fevered light in their eyes. Deacon’s words from a few minutes before suddenly came crashing back into my head. We’ve already lost the cops.

  “Vamps,” I said under my breath. Then, louder, as the realization sank in, “Those are vamps!” The front of the group halted in their advance, staring directly at me.

  “Yeah, and I’m pretty sure they heard you!” Deacon spun me around. “Let’s go!” My gaze lingered backward just long enough to see the vamps start their charge. Deacon and I had put some distance between ourselves and the subway entrance, but these creeps were unsettlingly fast, like roaches.

  “They’re gaining!” I yelled, without needing to look. The rapid beat of their shoes on the concrete was closing in.

  “Then get ready to turn!” Deacon shouted back. He shot a glance at me and made a motion toward the empty rails with his left hand. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve thought he’d lost his mind, but right then, we were in no position to argue about it. Not to mention, faced with a brigade of vampire cops, the possibility of a subway train quickly became the least of my worries.

  Sword in hand, I leapt off the access path on the side, into the realm of dirt and grime that lay hidden under New York’s transit system. The stench of stale urine assaulted my senses, and I screwed up my whole face on reflex even as I turned on my back foot to meet the enemy. The sword’s fiery light washed their sallow complexions in orange-yellow tones, lighting their eyes from underneath. Somewhere to my left, I heard the distinctive cocking of a gun. “All right,” Deacon said, his voice as calm as the surface of a mountain lake. “Cut ‘em up.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice.

  I met the first cop as he hopped down into the track bed. The hilt of the Gladius Solis twirled lazily in my hand. My man in blue had half a second to size me up before his head went flying back toward the platform, the wound in his severed neck cauterizing instantly. Up close, I observed that the uniform draped over his gaunt frame had seen better days; it was torn in places, stained with blood and other mysterious vile substances. He reeked, and the scent of death didn’t mix well with trash and old pee.

  “Keep moving,” Deacon called to me. “I’ll cover you. Don’t ever put your back to a wall.” Sharp cracks from his gun punctuated his words. Each muzzle flash lit the interior of the tunnel like bolts of localized lightning. I used those and the persistent ambient glow of my sword to get a better read on where the vamps were. Deacon was correct, especially within the narrower confines of the tracks. If I gave up the positional high ground, we’d both be shit out of luck.

  “Kind of wish Marcus was here,” I muttered under my breath. Another crack-flash combo seared through the dank underground air. One of the vamps went spinning backward, spine folding over the edge of dirty concrete. I used the opening his body left to get in the middle of his colleagues and run the edge of my blade in an unrelenting circle. As usual, flesh and bone offered no resistance. After the bodies had fallen to drifts of dust, I drew the sword up and rammed the butt of it straight behind me. The heavy hilt smashed home, and I heard a satisfying thud. Something else, too: the telltale rush of undead flesh melting into piles of ash. To Deacon, I yelled, “How many do you see?”

  “Less than they want you to think. Keep going!” He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, like a well-oiled machine. I drew burning arcs in the dark. Vamp ash scattered all around my feet. It clung to my clothes and hair. I tried to keep it out of my mouth but failed.

  “I’m gonna need a gallon of Listerine after this,” I said.

  Deacon’s assessment of numbers turned out to be more or less accurate. Within the span of a few minutes, the throng was thinning. Part of me had expected a much larger force, but they were probably either caught up in the melee on the surface or gathering like a tsunami for a single overwhelming strike. The second thought made beads of sweat start forming under my shirt. I whirled, both hands on the sword. Two cops, one on either side, fell to the ground in sync, utterly bisected.

  They left the last of the group standing alone in front of me. He grinned and cracked his knuckles. We rushed each other at the same time. His pale, clammy fingers reached for my throat, but I saw it coming a mile away. Ducking beneath his outstretched arm, I dug the tip of the Gladius Solis into his gut, twisted the blade, and followed through in an upward sweep. A fine mist of red floated down on me.

  After that, sheer quiet reigned again.

  “Think you’re getting better with that thing,” Deacon remarked.

  “Thanks!” I allowed myself the luxury of a quick grin. “I’m hoping the gods will have the courtesy to be impressed while I kill them.”

  Deacon laughed. The sound was pleasant, but short-lived, drowned out by a rattling screech we both could’ve identified in our sleep. My eyes cut from his face to the depth of shadows inside the tunnel. A faint light splashed along the wall. Its ragged edges danced wildly, and its colors matched the sword in my hand.

  “Holy shit,” Deacon murmured. “That train’s on fire.”

  Right on cue, the car careened around the bend onto the straightaway, wheels screaming like a city-funded demon. Flames shot from the windows and licked at the roof. An oppressive wall of heat washed over me.

  “We gotta go. We gotta go now!” I hauled my ass up onto the narrow access path, booking it on Deacon’s heels and hoping we’d figure out an escape before the train caught up, which gave us approximately twenty seconds by my amateur calculations. The horrible racket only grew louder, amplifying itself in the subway chamber. “Tell me you see something!” I hollered. The voice of the oncoming train dwarfed my own.

  But suddenly, Deacon skidded to a stop, and the shape of an access door slipped into view. He wrenched it open with both hands, biceps straining in his sleeves. “Get in!” His voice sounded muffled and far away. I darted past him over the threshold. The heat was becoming unbearable. Fumes from fuel smoke and burning oil stung the inside of my nose. Briefly, the train’s awful scream was all I could hear.

  Then Deacon slammed the door. We stood nearly chest to chest in a small alcove, the walls of which trembled before the might of that blazing train. My blade had gone out in the mad rush—it was pitch black in there. Only the sound of Deacon’s heavy breathing provided any sort of orientation.

  “You good?” he asked after the noise of the train had died off in the distance. “All in one piece?” His voice, as deep and smooth as ever, resonated right into my ear. I refused to let myself shiver.

  “Yeah. You?” He was so close that a blush crept up my neck unbidden. So glad neither of us can see for shit right now.

  “As far as I can tell. There’s a ladder somewhere on the wall behind you. We climb it, it’ll take us back to the street. Where on the street, I’m not quite sure, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  I stepped away from him with my hand out until my palm struck a damp, hard surface. A foot to the left, my fingers found the side of a ladder, and two seconds later, I was on my way up. The ladder brought me to a small room with a door that opened on the ground level of a station a few blocks from where we’d entered the syst
em.

  “You ready for this?”

  Deacon didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Already, more noise spilled down the stairs ahead of us. We broke into a jog, taking the steps two at a time.

  The scene on the street stood in stark contrast to the abandoned subway. The road in front of us was jammed full of traffic. Horns blared a harsh and constant symphony. Many of the cars were already empty, and huge numbers of people swarmed around them on foot. Safety glass crunched in every direction. I could see packs of looters bashing in plate-glass storefronts, breaking open security grates. Countless alarms whooped in my ears.

  It was total pandemonium. Any semblance of order had fled when the sky opened up. A band of satyrs strutted past me, their cloven hooves in full view, firing automatic bursts into the air.

  “Fuck,” I said to no one in particular. “Fuck!” My head felt light and crushingly heavy all at once. Everything around me was descending into chaos. “Hey!” I whipped around, pointing my sword at some punk carrying the register out through the busted-up front of a nearby bodega. “Put that back.”

  “Screw you, lady!” the kid answered. “Can’t you see it’s a damn free-for-all out here? Eat or be eaten!”

  I grimaced, closing the distance between us in one smooth pounce. The Gladius Solis hovered below his chin, toasting the skin of his throat. “Put it back, jackass. Now.”

  His eyes widened as he realized I was wielding a flaming sword. “What the fuck, lady?”

  “Now!” The register dropped to the sidewalk. “Good enough. Go home. Lock your doors. Don’t come out until you hear it’s safe.” The kid gave me and the blade one last disbelieving look and hightailed it into the teeming crowds. I hefted the register and stepped over the window frame to replace it on the counter.

  “Come on, Vic.” I looked up to see Deacon watching me with a gaze that was understanding but firm. “We can’t stay here. The sooner we get to the safe house, the sooner we can start figuring out where the hell we go from here.”

  I sighed, running my fingers through my hair. There was no time to feel overwhelmed, or to waste on trying to stem the tide of petty crime. I had to get my priorities straight. First on the list: Maya and Jules.

  “Focus, Vic,” I told myself. “You can do this.”

  Victoria!

  “Marcus?” He was faint, and the words that came after my name were garbled, like a radio set to a scrambled channel. But there was no mistaking that voice, and simply hearing it gave me the shot of motivation I desperately needed.

  “What?” Deacon scanned the area. “Where?”

  “No, I heard him!” I didn’t know if he could hear me, but I spoke a response out loud just in case. “Hey, Marcus? We’re on our way, okay? Tell Jules and Maya to sit tight. We’ll be there soon.” With that, I turned to Deacon. “How do we do this?”

  He was frowning at his phone. “The cellular networks are overloaded. First thing I need to do is find somewhere to make a call.”

  “Then what?” We began to move, shouldering our way against the flow of the maddened masses. I kept my eyes glued to the outline of Deacon’s broad shoulders, for fear of losing track of him.

  “Then we head for the park. From there, it should be easy.”

  Those were famous last words if ever I’d heard any. But I chose to put my faith in Deacon St. Clare.

  At the moment, he was the best I had.

  Chapter Three

  “Over there!” Deacon pointed over the crowds, and I followed the direction of his finger toward a bank of payphones on the opposite side of the street. “I’m gonna need you to stand watch while I do this.”

  I grinned, even though he could barely see me. “Oh, I’m suddenly your bodyguard? I don’t think I get paid enough for that.”

  Ignoring me, he waded across the street, diplomatically shouldering his way through panicked pedestrians. I braced the unlit hilt of the Gladius Solis against my forearm to follow suit. More than once, glimpses of figures that seemed a little less than human got caught in my peripheral vision, but they were there and gone so quickly I barely had time to turn my head.

  When I reached Deacon at the phones, I leaned in and whispered, “This is bad. It’s worse than I thought.”

  He gave me a look and gestured at the pandemonium behind us. “Worse than this? Because this is a damn sorry state of affairs. I haven’t seen anything like it since September of 2001.” He glanced around before slinging the phone off its hook. “Didn’t think I’d ever see it again. Or maybe I just hoped I wouldn’t.” Change jingled in his pocket as he fished for a couple of quarters. Then he started dialing, and I turned away, back toward the city.

  New York City had never been beautiful to me in the traditional sense, but it was always home. And now that my home was under immeasurable threat, a surge of protectiveness was welling up inside me like I had never felt before. All those years of searching for my parents’ killer and my place in the world had finally brought me to this stretch of sidewalk, watching demons pour from the skyward mouth of hell.

  The situation was bad any way we looked at it, but I couldn’t give up. The fight was far from over, and we had to keep moving the only way we could. We’d claw our way to the top. We’d snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It was the only way I knew how to live now, and I wasn’t going to back down anytime soon.

  In Marcus’s absence, I was having to learn how to give my own pep talks. I was also realizing how much I missed his constant chatter in my ears. People in crisis together often formed deeper, faster bonds, and I guessed that was true even if one of them was technically dead.

  I cut my eyes toward Deacon again, checking on his progress with the pay phone. He stood with the receiver to his ear, looking frustrated. I pulled my own cell out of my pocket and thumbed in the first number I thought of. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Deacon. We’d gotten beyond that at this point. No one in their right mind would wrestle quarters into a public phone unless they absolutely had to.

  I just really wanted to hear Jules’s voice.

  The other end didn’t cough up so much as a single ring. I listened to dead air for about ten seconds before giving up and sliding the device back into my pocket. Everyone who ran by us seemed to have the same idea—with about the same level of success. Whenever I tuned back in to the general roar of the public, most of what I heard were voices screaming into walls of bad connection. No doubt, the networks had long since crashed. Forgotten energy probably wreaked havoc on our measly Earth technology.

  Again, I thought of Marcus, knowing he’d have something to say about that. I hoped he and Maya were taking good care of each other. A little smile jumped onto my face. She would probably argue with him less than I did.

  The sound of the old phone clattering back into the cradle shook me out of my thoughts. “We’re set,” Deacon said from behind me. “I got a friend meeting us in the arboretum in the park. I don’t think he’ll wait for long.”

  “How many mysterious friends do you have?” I asked half-jokingly as he pulled into the lead. We stepped off the curb onto the pavement, and instinct forced me to look both ways. The road was choked more or less completely by the never-ending flow of foot traffic that didn’t break for cars as much as it simply encompassed them. Clusters of abandoned vehicles littered the way, their lights on, doors open, windows smashed. The shrill wail of alarm systems rang through the hazy air.

  “Enough to save our asses, I hope,” Deacon answered. He kept his own gaze fixed straight ahead, maybe to prevent himself from becoming overwhelmed by the scene. I couldn’t blame him, but at the same time, it was impossible to tear my focus away. Thousands of people swarmed every open space, fleeing from a force they couldn’t understand. And I, the one who could fight against this threat, was fleeing too.

  I’m doing this to help you, I thought, wishing for the first time in my life that it was possible to broadcast my feelings. I promise. I’m not leaving you behind.

  In the next instant,
I saw something so strange I thought I must have been hallucinating. The mass of living, running, shouting bodies in front of me swelled like a tsunami, breaking apart under the force of a shockwave that rolled down the street. We all sort of crushed into one another. Deacon’s shoulders tipped back into me. He reached back to grab for my arm. “What the hell was that?”

  “I have no—” I didn’t need to finish the sentence. The wave reached us at full strength, and suddenly, we were all fighting each other to stay on our feet. To fall would have meant getting trampled to death beneath the fear-fueled stampede. Someone plowed straight into me, knocking the breath from my lungs.

  “Vic!” Deacon shouted. I was dimly aware of him reaching out, but I couldn’t have answered if I wanted to. The sight of a new god had stunned me into total silence. All the sounds faded into a monotonous background hum. I no longer felt the hands and feet shoving me around. All I saw was the bronzed silhouette of a monument come to life as it strode purposefully down the center of the boulevard.

  “Who the hell is that?” I wasn’t asking anyone in particular, but the words fell out of my mouth of their own accord. Deacon, who had managed to squeeze his way in front of me, grabbed my shoulders.

  “Get it together, Vic!” he demanded. “Don’t scare me like that. Thought I lost you for a second.” He kept a hand on my arm as he finally turned around himself to see what I was gawking at. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all. Now we gotta deal with this buck naked colossus?”

  “Behold, New York Citadel!” The titan’s voice was sonorous and resonating, booming out over the chaos he had created. “Rejoice, for your savior Beleza has arrived!” Beaming, he cocked his head to the side as if listening to screams of adulation.

  “He’s going to flatten everyone,” I said. “We have to get in there and take him down. I’m not leaving if there’s a god right in my face. I can’t do that.” My grip tightened on the Gladius Solis.