It was the effect Cal had prayed for, as wind resistance slowed Stern’s plunge, at least marginally. He tore the sword free, launched himself clear into space, toward the roof. Stern plummeted like a downed bomber, was lost in the blackness between buildings.
Cal smashed into the lip of the rooftop, went flailing across the surface, blasting through a curtain of green flame and halting thankfully on a bare strip of concrete. Shakily, he rose to his feet, slapping away burning ash, sheathed his blade. A blast furnace roar assaulted him, the heat was appalling.
“Cal!” He spun to see Colleen, smudged but unharmed, thirty feet off near a wall of flame. He ran to her, caught the desperation on her face. She nodded toward the barrier.
Through the flames Cal spied his sister standing on the precipice, the unbroken line of demonfire advancing, backing her inexorably toward the drop.
There was no way to reach her.
Colleen hocked a shaft into her crossbow. Her voice was grief, a whisper. “If you want, I could. .”
“No!” Cal said. He cast about for some answer, some tool. But there was no water, nothing to quench or smother.
Through the leaping, killing flame, Cal locked eyes with his sister, saw terror there and a forgiveness that cut to his soul. She was moving her lips, speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the wail of combustion. Sparks of blue energy spat from her pores, flared swimming across her skin.
And then the fire surged up to her, and she reeled back from it, off the edge into space. Cal screamed. A blue flash like lightning erupted from her, and she was lost from sight. Flame shot off the roof in a long tendril toward where she had been, as though drawn by a vacuum, whipped about in midair, coalesced into a tornado of fire. It wheeled and swelled, drawing fuel from the rooftop, inhaling ravenously.
Like a molten sea emptying out, the fire gushed to the edge, cascaded into the whirlwind until the roof was free of flame, a wasteland of char and smoke. The funnel was spinning faster now, an impossible blur throwing off blazing fingers. It grew brighter and more frenetic, contracting upon itself, squeezing down to a pitiless core, dazzling white. Then it exploded.
The blast knocked Cal off his feet, blinded him. Dazed, the afterimage strobing in his eyes, he groped, found a handhold, the stone still hot, searing him. He dragged himself upright.
He could see a little now. Colleen stood with an odd light shimmering over her, childlike with awe. He followed her gaze past the lip of the building to the space beyond.
There Tina, or what had been Tina, hovered in a nimbus of light, an opalescent play of midnight blue, yellowjacket, carnelian weaving over its surface. Her face seemed broader yet more fine-boned than before, her skin blue-veined marble, lips thin and bloodless. Her ears elongated to fine points that thrust outward through hair that, albino silk, wafted about as if underwater. Her clothes too drifted weightless, the sphere of light about them seemingly a shield from the world’s forces.
Cal thought of the boy he had glimpsed in the tunnels, who had fled at his sight.
Tina was regarding her hands abstractedly, the fingers El Greco long and nail-less, turning them this way and that. Then she glanced up, and her eyes met Cal’s. They were all blue save the vertical pupil, with no whites showing, and blazed such a savage cobalt they seemed lit by an alien fire. Her mouth twisted in a bleak grimace, and he saw to his dismay that her teeth were triangular razors, like a shark’s. What are you? he wondered. She seemed so inhuman.
But then she began to weep, and he knew he had not lost her, at least not fully. He stretched out his arms, coaxing her, and she came floating to him. His arms pierced the boundary of light and then his face, effervescence tingling on his skin. But Tina was solid, and his arms enfolded her as she cried.
Devil night. That’s what old Granny Marxuach had called it, making him tremble and quake back when he was a little pissant on the rancho. All the demons and witches and hell shades take to the sky, so you better dig yourself under the covers and keep tight your soul.
But Papa Sky hadn’t believed any of that crap for the better part of eighty years. Real life had been woolly enough.
His own brand of night had come on him back when he was straight and smooth-skinned and fine, his hair black and gleaming like oil. At first, it had been merely ripples in his vision like smears on glass, then a fog, and then darkness.
Still, it hadn’t been all bad. He hadn’t had to watch himself grow bent and lined and worn, a lank tree that had stood too many storms. And he had his axe, the 1922 Selmer alto sax that was part of his body, that he could make sing like Jesus himself humming. Blind as he was, he could still cut his own reeds, shaving down the Le Blanc bamboo with the straight razor he kept by his bed, in the one-room walkup he’d had since that glory night when he’d subbed for Johnny Hodges with Ellington at the Cotton Club.
How New York had changed since then. The elegance and grace and courtliness had sluiced away, leaving the young who had never known it desolate, abandoned, longing.
Of course, it had changed a good deal more in recent days, now wasn’t that the truth. He could smell it in the wind, feel it on the air. And the stories he’d been hearing, like hophead D.T.s out of Bellevue. Some crazy badness was running the streets, no two ways about it.
But for some reason, no one messed with him. He’d gone about his business, gigging on street corners for quarters and dimes, that butterscotch sound booming up sweet and mournful along the concrete canyons. And the take had been good. The coins jingled warm in his pocket, a tambourine accompaniment to the tapping of his fiberglass cane as he made his way home along the uneven stones of the familiar alleyway. He’d sensed the desperation in the listening ones, their fear. They needed to be soothed, and maybe that was the answer: they hungered for just one thing that wasn’t all screwed up, even if it came wafting off some old blind black Cubano.
And sometimes, when no one else was around, there’d be a soft shuffling of something in the corners, swaying to “Body and Soul,” to “Stardust,” saying nothing. He’d catch a musky stink at those times, and a shiver would run up his back. He’d be glad he couldn’t see whatever it was that was hearing him.
Now it was late night, the summer heat leeched away and the cold seeping into him as he eased along the path like a shadow, his case clutched tight, the axe silent and drowsing.
Ahead of him, a low moan sounded, a timber that swelled and tremored through him. A hot liquid iron smell assailed him, like a whole lake of blood, like a slaughterhouse.
He was seized with a panicky, frantic urge to turn, bolt headlong away, never mind what he might plow into, what stick-thin chalky bones might snap.
But then the moan faded down, was broken by something like a sob of pure anguish. This cat’s in a world of pain. Papa Sky’s heart rose in him. And he’s alone, in the dark.
Tentatively, he stepped forward. The tip of his cane found a shape along the ground, resilient and large. He could feel heat radiating off it, hear a raspy, resonant breathing.
Nervously, Papa Sky licked his lips, tongue running over the ridges of callus. “How we doin’ there?” His throat was dry, the words shaky.
The breathing stopped, and there was a long, hanging silence. Finally, a voice croaked through the pain, “I’ve had. . better days.”
Papa Sky laughed, and there was tenderness in it. He bent down, put a gentling hand on the figure’s back. Slick with blood, the leather felt hard as armor, bone projected at odd angles.
“Well, you just take it slow.” Papa let out a breath that would have been exquisite through the axe. “We gonna see what we can do for you.”