“You’re dead,” I managed to croak, like it would be a news flash for him.
“As a doornail. You should try it sometime.” His cracked, dry lips spread in a grin, and for the first time I noticed pinpoints of brilliant red light shining inside the pupils of his eyes like finely focused lasers. “It’s not like you think. Death is so different from what I expected. No pearly gates. No light at the end of the tunnel. Sully was full of shit about all of that.”
I struggled to free my gun arm, but he was strong, even stronger than he’d been when he was alive. He banged my wrist against the kitchen wall until the gun slipped from my hand and dropped to the floor. He kicked it to the other side of the room.
“You made a big mistake, errand boy,” he said. “You pissed off the wrong people. Now something’s coming for you, something real bad. When they get here, everyone in this house will die. Even you. Do you understand? This isn’t like getting shot in a playground in Queens. This is a whole new ball game. They will take you apart in ways you can’t come back from. So listen good: You can’t stop them. Don’t even try. If you fight them, you’ll lose.”
He let go of me. I doubled over, holding my throat and coughing. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Consider it professional courtesy, one dead man to another.” Bennett looked over his shoulder at the kitchen window. Outside, the sky was growing lighter. “The sun will be up soon. They’re coming at dawn, which means you’re running out of time. If you want to live, you better start running now.”
“I have to warn the others,” I said. “I have to get them out of here.”
I turned to the door, but he was already there, blocking my path. I glanced over my shoulder at the empty spot where he’d been standing. I hadn’t even seen him move.
“Fuck the others, they’re irrelevant,” Bennett said. Before I could protest, he pulled a small object out of the inside pocket of his blazer and put it in my hand. “Here, take this.”
It was a small cloth pod, curved like a kidney bean and rough like burlap. Its surface was speckled with tiny dots of metal. It felt warm, and something thrummed inside it like the gears of a machine.
“What is it?” I asked.
Bennett ignored me. He picked my gun up off the floor and handed it to me. “You’d better take this with you, too. You’re going to need it.”
“Take it with me? I’m not going anywhere until—”
White light burst out of the object in my hand. It was blinding, filling the room until everything—the walls, the floor, the kitchen table, even Bennett himself—was obliterated from view. A moment later the light faded.
The kitchen was gone. So was Bennett. In fact, Ingrid’s whole house was gone. I was standing alone on a circular patch of cement and grass in the middle of a big, empty traffic circle. I glanced around in a desperate panic, trying to get my bearings, but saw only empty sidewalks, shuttered storefronts, and darkened windows.
I looked at the strange little object still in my hand, and understood then what it was. A magic charm, like the ones Bethany carried in her vest. Bennett had tricked me. The son of a bitch had used a charm to transport me away from the house against my will.
I looked up at the tall granite column that rose out of a dry fountain bed beside me. Perched seventy feet atop it and lit by floodlights against the night sky was the unmistakable marble statue of Christopher Columbus.
Shit. I was in Columbus Circle, nearly a mile from the safe house, and from whatever was heading there now to kill everyone inside.
“Send me back!” I shouted into the empty street. “Damn it, Bennett, send me back!”
Fifteen
Down the canyon of Central Park South, bookended on one side by the edge of the park and on the other by skyscrapers, the sky was already fading from black to gray. In the distance, a violent slash of pink tore at the eastern horizon.
They’re coming at dawn.
How much time did I have left? Half an hour? Less? I cursed under my breath. Wherever he was now, Bennett obviously had no intention of sending me back to the safe house. That left me with precious little time to cover roughly a mile’s distance and get the others out of the house before it was too late. I looked at the strange burlap charm he’d given me, but I didn’t have the first clue how to make it transport me back. I stuffed it in my pants pocket. The only way I was going to get back to the safe house was on my feet.
I put my back to the impending dawn and darted across Columbus Circle, up the sidewalk to Ninth Avenue, then swung left to bolt downtown. An empty cab drifted along the street beside me, but when I tried to hail it the cab sped by, its off-duty light shimmering in the predawn gray.
I kept running, trying to outrace the rising sun and wishing Bennett had just stayed dead where he belonged. Why had he come back to warn me? He certainly didn’t owe me any favors after I’d handed him over to Underwood.
I pushed the question from my mind and tried to focus on just getting back to the safe house, but the void it left was instantly filled by more questions: Without an amulet like the one Thornton wore, how had Bennett come back from the dead? When he said I pissed off the wrong people, who did he mean? Who was coming to the house at dawn, and why couldn’t I stop them?
I barreled down empty sidewalks and through intersections, the gun in my trench coat pocket banging against my hip, and all the while the sky kept brightening. I crossed Ninth Avenue against the traffic light, barely avoided getting hit by a speeding Daily News delivery truck, and ran up a side street toward Tenth. How much time was left? How soon before dawn?
Farther up the block, I noticed a figure walking toward me. From a distance the man was just a shadowy silhouette, but as I drew closer his features clarified, sharpened. My heart jumped into my throat. I skidded to a halt, breathing hard.
It couldn’t be.
Tomo.
Where the hell had he come from?
I turned to run back the way I came and slammed into a wide wall of a man coming up behind me. “Whoa, where you goin’, T-Bag?” Big Joe asked with a sneer. “Been lookin’ for you.”
His fist connected with my jaw. I fell, the back of my head hitting the sidewalk and flaring with pain. I tasted blood and wiped it from the corner of my mouth. “How did you…?”
“Find you?” Big Joe finished for me. He grabbed the lapels of my trench coat and hauled me onto my feet. “Underwood’s got eyes everywhere. You know that.”
He dragged me across the sidewalk to a run-down building whose glass front door was propped open with a brick. He yanked the door open all the way and pulled me into the vestibule inside. The stench of urine was overpowering. Two homeless drunks lay curled against the walls, sleeping off the effects of the empty bottles scattered around them. Tomo followed us in, pulling his gun and using the butt to smash out the single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. Big Joe kicked the drunks awake and told them to clear out. They didn’t wait to be told twice.
Big Joe slammed my back into the wall. I groaned as pain flared through my wounds.
Tomo put his gun away, which was a relief, but the grin of sick satisfaction on his face told me not to get too comfortable. “I think it’s time to teach this piece of shit a lesson,” he said.
Big Joe brought his face up close to mine, his breath hot on my cheek. “We oughta kill you now while we have the chance.”