It is some time before it sinks in that Howard Russo is gone.
TWENTY-TWO
COLLEEN
Okay, easy would’ve been too much to ask, I suppose. But I was surprised to find that a tiny piece of Pollyanna deep down in my soul was stunned that we hadn’t been able to just march in, have our lawyer talk to their lawyers, and march out again.
The postshock aura was a bitch; tiny ice crystals jogged and reeled in my eyes and ears and blood. But that burned off fast, leaving nothing but pure mad. The fact that there was no one to aim it at only made me madder.
Anger was safe. Angry, I wasn’t aware of the Tower looming behind us, playing out its miles of marionette string. Hell, I don’t know which was worse, seeing it or not seeing it. I may be dense as a post, but even I could feel something. Something more than just surprise that the Source had thrown us another curve, another something-we’d-never-seen-before-a tweaked building, for godsake.
Rock, scissors, paper. Anger cuts fear. Habit breaks anger. I swung into survival mode, checking resources and escape routes, assessing damage. Doc, Goldie, and Magritte were a mess. Enid was stone cold petrified. Cal was grim, purposeful, in control. He kept us moving, parting the sidewalk traffic with a look, making a hole through which I could drive our shell-shocked herd.
Once out of sight of the Tower, I caught up with him and paced him. “Was that it? Was that the Source?”
He shook his head, kept walking hard. His face was like stone. “I don’t know.”
“Goldie-”
“Later. Now, we need to get out of here.”
“Where to?” I asked.
“Russo’s. We need to regroup.”
I nodded, looked around. “Russo’s gone, the feckless little shit.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
I shut up and took point. I was still in the lead when we crossed the intersection of Washington and Wells, which meant I was first to confront the cotton candy wall. It looked different than Goldie described it-less like cotton candy and more like one of those computer-generated nebulas I’ve seen in science fiction movies.
I hesitated, glancing around to see if any natives were watching, and saw a familiar face. The Suit. And he’d brought friends. My senses came on line with a crackle of electricity; my spine felt as if it had grown rebar. They were armed-baseball bats, chains, knives. They were coming down Washington behind us, leaving very little room for friendly interpretation of their intentions. Traffic parted in front of them, people scurrying to get out of their way.
Cal had seen them, too. He’d drawn his sword and slowed up, putting himself in our rear guard.
I gauged the distance to the wall of red ick and plunged at it, hearing the others close on my heels. It was like running into a blizzard of electric red glitter. A wave of intense, stinging heat kissed my face. Surprised, I sucked in a breath of air and inhaled fire.
I twisted around and flung myself back toward the others, choking and gesturing for them to go anywhere but where I’d just been.
“This way!” Enid shouted, and darted up Wells to the right, into the pedestrian traffic.
The rest of us followed, sucking up under the eaves of the buildings. We had the advantage of a half a block of distance between our attackers and us and two guides who knew the neighborhood. We had the disadvantage of me. I felt as if I’d snorted fireworks; my lungs were still burning and my skin itched like a sonofabitch. They say your skin itches when you change… Nausea washed over me, but I plowed on, keeping pace with the others.
Enid and Magritte took point now, plowing and dodging through the people on the street, making a hole for the rest of us to slip through.
A shadow passed over us, pulling my eyes upward. Overhead, the red haze eddied as if in the wake of a large bird. I shivered and prayed it wasn’t dragons. That’d be about all we needed.
Ahead of me, Cal broke stride. “Who the hell is that?”
I faced front. Someone had appeared out of an alley in front of Enid. In the next second the guy grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him into the alley. Goldie and Magritte shot around the corner after him.
Adrenaline pumping, I hauled my crossbow out from under my jacket and bolted for the alley. When I cleared the corner with Doc and Cal hard on my heels, our guys were nowhere in sight. The stranger was crouched at mid-alley next to a large Dumpster. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and shades, and for a moment I thought it was Howard, until I realized that this was a full-scale model. He seemed to be unarmed.
He stood and waved us on. “C’mon, boys ’n’ girls!” His voice echoed strangely off the walls and rattled the fire escapes. “We don’t got time for proper intros.”
Good point. It was either him or a bunch of guys with baseball bats and chains. I lowered my crossbow and pounded down the alley, trying not to notice that my legs felt like licorice whips.
When I reached him, Mystery Man snagged me by the shoulder, wheeled me around the edge of the Dumpster, and shoved me down into a window well. Before I could catch my balance, someone grabbed me from below and pulled me into a cold, dark, musty hole. I opened my mouth to squawk, but a cool blue light flared practically in my face. It was balanced in Goldie’s palm. He lifted a finger to his lips. A second later Doc and Cal poured themselves down through the window well, followed by the Mystery Man. The window casement slammed shut behind them.
“This way.” Our guide crossed the basement in a few strides. We followed without question.
We climbed down farther into a subbasement, crawled (or floated) through a manufactured hole between the foundations of two buildings, then went up a flight of rickety metal stairs and out another window well. We crossed an alley, trespassed into the creepy backstage area of a defunct movie theater, and moved from there to lose ourselves in the sublevel of an abandoned office building.
There were times I was sure there were people along our route, but I couldn’t see anyone. Magritte and Goldie supplied our only light.
Once in the office building, our guide slowed to a stop. He’d long ago pulled off his shades, but only now did he turn to face us, tugging his hood back as he did. By Magritte’s light I could see he was young, maybe a little older than Enid. Skin the color of coffee with cream, eyes so dark brown they were almost purple.
Enid let out a sudden crack of laughter and threw his arms around the guy, squeezing him so hard I thought he’d break him in two. They went way back apparently, and there was much backslapping and bear-hugging to prove it. When that was done, Enid turned to the rest of us and introduced our rescuer as “Tone, one hell of a session man.”
I stood aside and watched as the guys shook hands all around, thanking him for the neat rescue, and Enid asked, “How’d you find us?”
“Funny about that,” Tone said. “We got this old guy in the ’hood that sort of passes for an oracle. He just seems to know all sorts of stuff that goes on downtown.”
“How?” asked Cal. “How would he know about us? How would he know you’d care?”
“Well, when devas come into this place, just about everybody knows-it sort of changes the vibe in the Red Zone.”
Goldie’s eyes rolled toward the layers of concrete over our heads. “There’s a disturbance in the Force, Luke.”
Tone gave him a glance. “Yeah, sorta like that. Anyway, when stuff like that happens, the old guy always seems to have the story. We ask him how he does it, he just smiles and says, ‘I got friends in high places.’ He told us about you guys when you first come in. Says you’ve got a deva and that you didn’t turn her over to the first scum bucket that comes along. That’s a remarkable thing, around here. Had to check it out. Seeing Enid again, man, that’s a pure surprise.”