And, to be fair, he had.
Goldie reached the shattered window now, glided fingertips along the base. “Bad vibes. Your sister an Aquarius?”
“No.”
Colleen, standing with Doc on the far side of the room, rolled her eyes. Cal tensed even more. When he had emerged with Goldie from the steam vent on Fifty-sixth into the fading twilight, he’d been gone a full three hours-but she and Doc had still been there, somehow sure he would return, as he too had felt certain they’d be waiting. Cal needed their faith not to have been misplaced.
Goldie lifted his gaze from the jagged glass, peered contemplatively out, the cool night breeze wafting his tangle of hair. Then his eyes slid off, looking off at nothing, or perhaps something inward, distant and intense. It was identical, Cal thought, to Goldie’s expression long days ago, when he had stood still and certain amid the morning chaos of Fifth Avenue, before any of this waking nightmare had transpired, when he had intoned, “Metal wings will fail, leather ones prevail.”
“That guy you’re looking for.” Goldie was speaking to Cal now, without turning. “Big scaly dude, right? Eight, maybe nine feet tall, not counting the wings?”
Cal felt a flush of blood, urgency seized him. “Can you see him?”
“Uh-huh.” Goldie’s voice was maddeningly nonchalant. “You wanna see him, too?” He nodded toward the street below.
Cal, Colleen and Doc crowded around the window. The mob was still a few blocks off, hundreds of men and women, moving wild and slow. In the darkness, they seemed almost like a single, savage creature, but Cal knew this was a trick of the light.
Stern was another matter.
The beast stood at the heart of the crowd, towering over the rest, advancing in great, easy strides, a grotesque, ruined angel in the light of their torches. Cal felt a stab of chill certainty that Stern was their leader, had set the madness in motion.
Doc and Colleen stared, awestruck. As much as he had tried to describe Stern, Cal knew he had not come close.
“Sweet mother of God,” Doc breathed.
“He’s a mother, all right.” Colleen’s voice was flint.
Cal said nothing.
He simply turned, his eyes falling on the glinting, killing metal of the sword.
The noise swirled about him, and it was dreadful.
Sam’s actions were his own once more, but it gave him little comfort. Instead, he felt adrift, abandoned to the chaos. In their frenzy, Stern’s followers-they had thought themselves his followers so very recently, although Sam had not been allowed the luxury of that illusion-were spreading out like acid, wrecking everything they chose not to claim as their own.
They jostled him, shoved him nearly off his feet unnoticed as they bled past abandoned cars and the tanker that still lay slantwise across the road. They were dismantling his tiny world, and Ely had commanded it!
What would Mother have said, had she been there to witness this mayhem? That Sam had reaped the whirlwind, that he had invited it in. And she would be right, of course, as she had always been right, making him feel ashamed and small and wrong.
It was the old, familiar sensation, magnified a thousand-fold, of cataclysm coming on, chaotic and malevolent, himself at ground zero, with nothing he could do to stop it. Mother had said there would be an accounting, had proclaimed it year after year. But she had never stated-hadn’t needed to, he now realized-how, in that accounting, Sam himself would be judged.
At least, Ely had ordered his house spared. On a whim, it seemed, but Sam told himself he should feel grateful. Although who knew how long that whim might prevail.
A group seized on a lamp post, dragged it down with their brute weight, uprooting it. Sweating, grunting, they hefted it, rammed it against a heavily armored door, sent the barrier flying off its hinges. All the doors slammed in their faces all of their lives seemed to drive them, the unreasoning rejections and exclusions. Sam loathed them… and understood.
A roar went up as they poured into the fortress. Muffled screams sounded from within. From other dwellings, faces peered out from around curtains, silent and pale.
From the mouth of the block, Stern looked on in approval. Sam, wretched and heartsick, stepped gingerly over the glass and debris. He stumbled over a piece of rubble, and the sound drew Ely’s attention. Stern’s barracuda teeth glittered contemptuously; clearly, he had read Sam’s mood. “Get used to it,” he purred.
A tubby, olive-skinned man tore out of a building near them, a VCR in his arms. Stern swatted it away. “Leave it. It’s useless!”
Ahead, the horde had flooded the street. Sam found his view blocked by a wall of humanity. Suddenly, slicing through the clamor, a voice rang out, powerful and calm. “I used to work for a monster. . Now you’re working for him!”
Surprisingly, the mob quieted, slowed its advance. Sam’s gaze flashed to Stern. Outrage burned on that demonic face, but in the moment before Stern’s fury seared it away, Sam spied what he prayed to see there: uncertainty.
Stern blasted through the mob. Sam slipped and wriggled after him, desperate to see what would happen.
Stepping free of the crowd, Sam could see Cal Griffin standing before Stern on the steps of his building, his hand resting on a sword at his hip. The pose should have been laughable, but it wasn’t. Griffin seemed taller somehow, straighter.
Stern regarded Cal blandly, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Good golly, Miss Molly. I could’ve sworn I killed you.”
“Where’s my sister, you bastard?”
“Language, there are children present.” Stern turned to his disciples. “Trash him.”
Eyes blinked. A switch, rousing the mob from its torpor. With a cry, they surged forward, brandishing lengths of metal and wood, improvised weapons, comical and horrific. Sam scuttled for cover behind a trash can.
Cal dragged out the sword as Goldie joined him. “Now!” Cal cried.
Goldie made a broad gesture. “BEGONE!” Light dazzled from his hands. Stern’s army fell back, many dropping into a crouch, shielding their eyes.
Then Goldie’s display sputtered and went out. He turned to Cal, apologetic. “Gutter ball.”
From behind a low wall, Doc shot up and hurled a Molotov cocktail at an open space in the mob. It exploded in flames, then dissipated like the fire in the tunnel. But it was enough to scatter them.
Screams echoed from across the street. Cal turned. A waiflike redhead was being dragged from her apartment house by several burly men. They seemed to be gloating in their power, feeding on her fear.
Cal’s hand tightened on the sword’s hilt. So much had been taken from them, from them all, the innocents and the fragile. I will not let this happen.
And then he was moving, screaming a war cry, a bluff but knowing it wasn’t a bluff if they refused to let her go.
He plunged into the group, flailing, all the techniques he’d learned momentarily blanked from his mind, his only ally a blind and absolute determination. The men fell back, one fleeing. But two kept their grip on the girl, and a third made a murderous swing with a length of pipe.
Cal ducked. The pipe sliced the air a quarter inch above his head. Cal shot up, blade held high, then smashed it down. It struck the pipe with which the man now shielded himself, threw off a hail of sparks and sent it flying. Cal was swinging wildly, using his weapon like a club, uncontrolled, unfocused, and then he realized-
I’m trying to kill these men. I’m afraid and out of control and only want them to die.
The realization pierced him like a bullet, both the viciousness of his thoughts and the white terror of impotence behind them.
Abruptly, his uplifted blade swung down into fencing position. And, with this quick movement, killing shifted from necessity into the option of last resort.