CHAPTER THREE
That night. The Hudson River.
The place smelled like beer—and like the river.
River Rat's Bar and Grill was built on a dock, on the Jersey side, a little more than a quarter mile upriver from the marina where Bleak had docked his boat. The place was lit by lamps hanging from the ceiling over the bar, and not much else. It was still a bar, but had given up the grill. River Rat's was just a large shack, to Bleak's mind: warped-wooden, saw-dusted floor, wooden walls decorated with paper money brought from foreign places, lots of Italian lire; poker chips from foreign casinos, nailed up; a few cobwebby fishing nets, with dusty glass floats, hung from the ceiling. A gaunt, white-haired old man in a stained white shirt, sleeves rolled up, worked behind the dented oak bar. He had an expression on his face that wasn't far from looks Bleak had seen on refugees, walking mile after mile, in Afghanistan: a lonely look of determined endurance.
A few sailors, from the big freighter tied up down the shore, drank at one end of the bar; two other men, their backs to Bleak, sat talking at a shadowy table in the far corner.
“How'd you come to choose this place?” Bleak asked. He had never been entirely certain of Shoella's motives—in anything.
“It wasn't that far from where your boat was tied up and...I thought it'd be interesting.”
Uh-oh, Bleak thought.
They ordered a couple of beers—the old man served up the drafts with surprising dexterity and speed—and they took them to a circular wooden table under an overhead lamp; a fishnet draped from the ceiling was spread close under the lamp, making a mesh of shadows over the table.
Bleak sat where he could keep an eye on the door and the rest of the bar. Thinking, Is this a date? Almost feels like one.
“You said it wasn't just you they were after.” Shoella was speaking low, so he had to lean closer to hear her. “What makes you think so?”
“The agent had some kind of detector that kept her right up on me...but I managed to get outside its range.”
“Or you're not outside its range. And they're about to bust in on us here.”
“Maybe. Thing is—you think they developed that device just for me? Uh-uh. Had to be for all of us. And you know they want to find all of us.” He shrugged. “Maybe I overreacted. She talked like it was just recruitment.”
Shoella sniffed. “They always talk that way. But their recruitment—mo' like enslavement. What this detector now?”
“Something new. But I don't think I'm mistaken about it. The Hidden has its own energy signature.”
She nodded. “When we open the gates, it's like canal locks—something has to spill through, into that space, level the energy flow. Power clings to us—and this thing smells it.” She toyed with her glass, tossed her head, making her dreads bob. “That all you know, what's going on? This run-in with one agent?”
“Pretty much. It's CCA. An agent named Loraine Sarikosca all over me like white on rice. And the detector. Kind of disturbing. They can use that thing to ferret us out, make life hell.”
“So maybe you want to come over to La'hood, join up close. Quit being a Rambler. La'hood watch your back.”
La 'hood. That's what she called the New York-Jersey branch of the Shadow Community. “I come over when I need to.”
“That's more selfishness than solidarity, Bleak,” she said, leaning toward him, eyes glittering. Her accent always thickened when she was feeling emotional. “I've had bad luck with 'solidarity.
“See, little white boy cheats us out of important resources when he don't come round.” Shoella sipped her beer and put the glass down with a clunk. The table wobbled. “We each got our talents. We got some overlap for sure. But we might need your especiality.” Another Shoella term, especially. “More especialities we have, more we—”
“More power Shoella has?” he interrupted, his tone casual, but knowing it would make her mad.
Shoella tensed—but after a moment he could feel her letting it go. It was something he could feel, when she let it go, as if someone had invisibly grabbed him by the shirtfront...then suddenly loosened grip.
“No,” she said softly. “That's not it, cher darlin'. It's not about my power.” There was a peculiar longing in her voice. Her gaze settled on his, for a moment, and he felt her longing psychically, as palpably as Spanish moss whipped by the wind to trail across his face. “Could be that you and I...with all our differences...are still...” She broke off, looking away. Left it unsaid.
“Our differences, anyway, aren't that important,” Bleak said. Not sure if the two of them were talking about the same thing anymore. “The Hidden is a field, and wind makes shapes in it...in the apeiron field.” He shrugged. Made a sweeping motion in his hand as he tried to articulate it. “And mind enters the shapes, and sometimes the shapes survive and call themselves spirits...and it's everywhere.” As Bleak spoke, he was aware of someone across the room looking at him fixedly—he could see himself, talking to Shoella, from the man's point of view—one of those men at the table in the other corner. That attention was hostile. He tried to ignore it. “But it's all one thing, in the big field of the Hidden, Shoella. So the especialities don't matter.”
She looked at him with her head tilted, her dreadlocks bouncing with the motion. “And listen to y'all—hidden depths. So t'speak. Oh, here the man comes.”
A figure loomed up at the table, and Bleak groaned inwardly, recognizing him. Donald Bursinsky. A refrigerator-size man in a gray hoodie, with a slack mouth and a faux-hawk and tiny, dirty-blue eyes and an ink-pen swastika tattoo on his neck.
“Yuh the bounty-hunter azzole ahright,” Bursinsky said. “Yuh put me in Rikers jail.”
“No,” Bleak said, sighing. “No, man, you went to Rikers because you skipped out on bail. You should've shown up in court. All I did was take you back to the system—they decided where you went from there. Just doing what I get paid for.” He saw a second, taller, less substantial man coming up behind Bursinsky, looking over Bursinsky's shoulder; second guy was gangly, with his hand in his pocket.
Gun in there, Bleak thought.
“Yuh know I go ahead 'n' kill uh bounty hunter, it ain't like I kill uh cop,” Bursinsky said. “Yeah, nobody gonna get that worked up about it,” the other guy said.
Bleak was sorry he didn't have a gun. He didn't want to use an energy bullet here in front of these people.
He realized that Shoella was watching him, seeming bemused. “I get to watch your especiality now?” she asked.
“Nope,” he told her, sizing Bursinsky up. The damned fool was standing much too close. “Not the technique you're thinking of, Sho'. I work with a team, when I'm bringing a man in. I've got people I call.”
“Yeah, this bounty hunter was a little bitch,” said the gangly guy. “Had to use a buncha guysta help him.”
“If being professional aboutajob is being a little bitch...,” Bleak said, shrugging. Bursinsky was so close Bleak could smell the big lug's sweat and the corn dog he'd been eating. “You want to go back to jail, Bursinsky?” Bleak asked, levering his feet hard against the floor and leaning forward. “You've gotta be on probation.”
“Now yuh threatening me wit' jail again? Gleaman...?” Bursinsky turned to the skinnier guy. “Give me the—”
The moment Bursinsky looked away, Bleak launched himself out of the chair, slamming his right shoulder into the big man's solar plexus; feeling Bursinsky fold up, wheezing over him. Bleak gave another shove, with his whole body, and Bursinsky fell heavily back onto the wooden floor, making it boom hollowly; making the glasses on the bar rattle. Gleaman gaped, confused.
Hearing Shoella mutter something to her loas, Bleak straightened up and in the same motion brought his right fist up hard into Gleaman's chin; felt Gleaman's jaws clack shut, teeth crunching under the blow. Gleaman spinning, falling.
“Sorry about this,” Bleak told the bartender. “Come on, Shoella,” he muttered to her, turning toward the door. He got three steps—and normally he'd have “seen” Gleaman aiming at his back. But too many people were staring at him.
A gunshot, and the bullet sliced past Bleak's right ear.
Bleak spun and saw Gleaman sitting on the floor, pistol in hand. Bursinsky was getting to his hands and knees next to him—as Gleaman squintingly aimed the Glock nine-millimeter at Bleak through a blue cloud of gun smoke.
“Not gonna f*cking miss this time,” Gleaman said.
Bleak began conjuring an energy bullet—but he figured it'd be too late.
Shoella was hissing to herself in Cajun French, and suddenly a translucent creature with a giant vulture's head and a man's body was hunched over Gleaman. A baka loa, one of the dark, “bitter” entities formed in the Hidden by voodoo beliefs. The apparition wore a lion's-hide skirt, and anklets of yellow grass hung over his bare black feet. The vulture's head was proportional with the body, beak opening wide...
And the baka loa dipped its beak to feed within Gleaman's skull. Its beak penetrated his skull without breaking the bone.
No one here could see this but Shoella and Bleak. All the others saw was Gleaman reacting in paralytic agony, flopping on his arched back, foaming at the mouth, whites of his eyes showing, the gun firing once. A glass fishing float shattered.
Bleak stepped in and expertly twisted the gun from Gleaman's hands. He looked at Bursinsky and said, “You want that to happen to you—what's happening to your friend?”
Bursinsky, getting to his feet now, was looking at Gleaman—who was spasming, chattering, and peeing his pants. Babbling: “Nuh take it out nuh take it out nuh take it out nuh take it out oh please God take it outta my head...”
“No,” Bursinsky said in a low voice. He took a step back. “I don't.”
“Then back off.”
Bursinsky looked at Shoella, sensing it was her doing somehow. He looked narrowly at Bleak. “How yuh find me anyway, last time? Just tell me that, Bleak. Ain't nobody shoulda been able to find me.”
Bleak shook his head. “I don't have to tell you anything except go see your f*cking parole officer. You can tell your friend, if he gets his mind working, that his gun went in the drink. And don't think I can't find you again if you piss me off. No matter where you go.”
Gleaman was still spasming, though the vulture-headed baka loa had vanished.
Bleak turned and walked out the door, wanting to get gone before the bartender called the cops. Normally he was okay with the police; today he was as reluctant to see the cops as Bursinsky would be. The CCA might have the cops looking for him. And he wanted to get away from the sound of Gleaman burbling.
Outside, a little breeze from the river lifted sweat from his forehead; the breeze smelled of oil and river reek. Shoella came to him on the edge of the dock, watched as he tossed the gun into the river. Plunk, and the pistol sank away. “You don't use your especiality at all, when you bounty huntin', cher darlin'?”
“Sure I do—to find them. Not to catch them. I want as few as possible to know.” She nodded. “Good sense, I 'spect.”
“You knew that loser was in there, Shoella? That why you picked it?”
Her smile gleamed, gold amid ivory. “My Yorena told me someone with hate for you was nearby, I wanted to see what you do. Only one time I see you summon les invisibles, see you work.” She toyed with her dreadlocks. “But I did see something in there—your manhood, that you summon and work. You summon something that way. From inside. Interesting to see.” She glanced at him; glanced away.
“That man going to recover?”
“Oh, no, I don' think,” she said disinterestedly.
He shook his head. He could feel she was attracted to him; he felt drawn to her, especially sexually. But at moments like this, it was easy for him to keep his distance.
She looked up into the inky sky, and he heard wings in the darkness. Her lips moved soundlessly. Then she turned to him, nodding. “They waiting for us. I will go to them first, you meet us. You know the dock La'hood use, sometimes, to meet?”
“Sure.”
“It'll take me some time. We'll meet just before dawn. When our strength is high.” He watched her walk into the darkness; then he went back to his cabin cruiser, tied up at the end of the pier.
He had mixed feelings about meeting with ShadowComm. They made him feel less alone. But they were embarrassingly unpredictable—and maybe because he held himself aloof, most of them were vaguely hostile to him.
As he cast off, he heard ghosts, under the pier, whisper warnings to him. But then they were always warning him of something.
Everyone was always in danger, after all. From cancer, from car crashes and plane crashes, from criminals. Most people managed denial; managed to pretend they were safe.
Gabriel Bleak never had that luxury.
***
THE WEE HOURS OF the next morning. Atlantic City.
The noise inside the casino was like a million children's toys, the slots with their bells and tweets and buzzes, endlessly clanging and tweeting, chiming crappy little tunes. It merged together into one warbling. People at the slots banging at the buttons—not just tapping them, but really smacking them hard. All desperation. Funny to see.
“Casinos got rugs in them like my aunt Louella's house,” Jock said, as he and Gulcher walked in past the smiling casino greeter. The carpet in Lucky Lou's Atlantic City Casino looked like paisley had' gotten a disease. “My sister always said Louella had the ugliest damn rugs inna world.”
“That greeter looked like he should be selling vacuum cleaners or some shit,” Gulcher said, laughing.
They were both on a sort of high, saying things they wouldn't ordinarily say and saying them loud. Gulcher, who always knew when cop types were watching him, was aware, as they walked the aisle between rows of slot machines, that he'd already attracted the notice of a couple of thick-bodied, greasy-headed guys in casual suits. They were casino security bulls with headsets, hearing-aid-like pieces plugged into their ears. They had little blue-and-white plastic tags on Croakies bands around their necks, with their names and lucky lou's atlantic city casino printed on them.
“But you know, this ain't the best casino on the street, man,” Jock said. “This ain't like Trump's or one of those classier places got the spas and fountains and they look more modern and shit.”
“It's just as big, and anyway it's the one I was guided to.” Gulcher looked around at all the clamorous action. “Here it is, like four in the f*cking morning,” Gulcher added, talking loud so Jock could hear him over the endless insane chatter of the slot machines, “and we're like five steps in the door, and we got these nice new civilian clothes, and still they already doggin' security on us here.”
“Hey, Troy, these places run hard twenty-four-seven, suckin' up people's hard-earned cash.”
“Yeah, we been in the wrong business, Jock.”
“I hear that. Where we going to start in here?”
“I'll know in a minute, I figure.”
Neither of them had any doubts about what their objective was—they just didn't know, yet, how it would happen. Jock had tacitly acknowledged Gulcher as the leader, and the one with the real connection to the whisperer. Jock waited on Gulcher, and Gulcher waited on the whisperer.
Gulcher was a little surprised that Jock had deferred to him this much, Jock being so paranoid. But then, he'd seen people who were all hostile to you get friendly—temporarily, anyhow-after a few tequilas, or a line of cocaine. The whisperer gave you that stony glow without the booze, without the drugs.
Besides, following Gulcher's lead had gotten them out of high security. It was working out so far.
Sure, it had occurred to Gulcher that he was taking a big risk, hooking up with the whisperer, allying with something he didn't really understand. He was becoming part of something, and somehow he knew there was no going back. He was committed now. And committed also meant stuck.
So what! He was out, free, armed, with money in his pocket, and in civilian clothes. Sure he was making a deal with something like...the devil. But hadn't he already done that, years ago, in a way? Hadn't he crossed the line anyway, when he killed that dealer and took his weight, back on the block? What difference did it make if he got in deeper?
And it felt good when he hooked into that power. Good watching those pigs die, walking out those doors.
They'd found a cab waiting in the parking lot of an all-night restaurant on the interstate, a quarter mile from the prison. They'd walked right up to the cab, and the driver, one of those Paki types with a turban, he'd seen their prison clothes and tried to drive away, but murky faces swirled around the hood of his yellow cab...and it just stopped running. Engine just froze up. Somehow seemed like the most natural thing in the world, to Gulcher, when that happened.
The guy had jumped out and run like a scared rabbit. They'd got in the cab, ignoring the sounds of sirens whooping from the direction of the prison. People starting to figure out there'd been a jailbreak and a lot of correctional officers gone crazy, back there. And dead people... quite a few dead.
Jock had taken the wheel and they'd driven in the cab to a little curtained, frame house a few miles from the prison, where there were a couple of guys who'd snitched on Gulcher.
The two dudes and their girlfriends had been up tweaking on their glass pipes when Gulcher and Jock walked in, Jock grinning, with the service .45 taken from the prison in his hand, firing one two three four five shots, only one extra needed when that black chick tried to crawl away.
They'd searched the place, taking some money and finding clothes they could wear. Hawaiian shirts, jeans, Gulcher picking up a nice pair of wraparound shades. “Wonder where they stole these shades,” he'd said. “Look at that, says 'Dior' on the side.”
“Might be counterfeit.”
“See there, you f*cking rain on my parade, Jock.”
Gulcher put the shades on now because the glaring overhead lights of the casino, meant to keep people awake and gambling, were irritating his eyes.
He was feeling some tiredness—normally in stir he'd be snoring about now—but he was still high, still feeling stony good.
He hadn't been tempted by any of the dope in that frame house. That was new, not being tempted by drugs. Anytime before, since he'd first got high at thirteen, he'd have jumped right into that shit.
But it seemed paltry now, compared to this.
“The suffering here is part of your power, “ came the whisperer, then, as they paused by the roulette table. “Look around you, and know it. “
Gulcher had never had an interest in whether people suffered, unless he hated them—then he was real interested. People he didn't know—who cared? But if the whisperer said it was important...
There, a row of people at the slot machines. Three stumpy, little old ladies with fat ankles and cigarette-yellowed hands and droopy-sad faces: a white lady, a Filipina, a Cuban lady. Then a chunky black woman in a nurse's uniform; then a middle-aged, maybe Italian guy with buck teeth, receding hair, fake-looking gold chain. Then a big black guy in a New York Jets jersey; then a white guy so fat he was in a wheelchair from it, barely fitting in there between rows of slots; then a tall, skinny white woman in a pale pink pants suit with a crotch stain that made him wonder if she'd peed her pants because she wouldn't leave her slot machine; then a scared-looking pimply young guy, maybe nineteen; then...
And they were all pumping the slots, one way or another pumping at them, though the new machines, most of them, didn't have the metal arms you pulled; these weren't the old one-armed bandits, these were touch-screen and push-button, and they were all shiny with colors and panels glowing with pop icons, and they had themes, some of them, pictures of characters from TV shows on them—a CSI: Denver slot machine, a Magic Girl one, a Disney Planet one—and they had little lights on top that revolved when they paid, and they all went yippety-yippety-yippety-tweet-tweet-tootle all the f*cking time.
As he watched them, a kind of ripple was in the air around each slot player, a membrane of heightened perception provided by the whisperer—and it revealed a second face on each person. As if each slot player had two faces at once, the second one floating behind and a little above the one you normally see. The second face was blue-white, almost like a mask, but you could see through it—a ghostly visage, with a different expression from the face the slot player showed the world, and it was looking around.
“That is the face of their souls, “ said the whisperer.
These soul faces were frightened and angry. They had the look of trapped people, Gulcher decided. Like they were really stuck somewhere and not sure how or why they got stuck there and they just wanted to get out. Like bugs in a Roach Motel.
The faces of their souls...
“You see it too?” Jock asked, sounding scared and sick himself.
“Yeah,” Gulcher said. Wondering what the expression on the face of his own soul looked like. These people looked like they were suffering, all right. That was funny, because the regular faces on their bodies looked like they were kind of bored, or just vaguely interested, or slightly excited. But these soul faces were like something you'd see in a mental ward. Gulcher himself had once been in a mental ward, playing crazy to stay out of prison, and he had fessed up pretty quick. Because that place
was too damned depressing. He figured people's body faces in mental wards looked like their soul faces, no different.
“Those you see before you have folded their winds into the games of chance, “ said the whisperer. “Their minds are trapped in the game, round and round. They have surrendered themselves; they have left an opening to anything that wishes to enter and take them. They are like puppets waiting for a hand. Your hands. Stretch out your hands. Two hands will do for many. “
“Two hands for many,” Gulcher repeated. Not knowing why.
“What'd you say, Troy?” Jock asked.
“Shut up, I gotta concentrate and shit,” Gulcher told him curtly. Jock had some ability to hear the whisperer, to glimpse the hidden things, but he didn't have anything like Gulcher's gift.
“Now reach out, “ said the whisperer. “Speak the names you were taught and reach out—feel your hands beyond your hands. “
He remembered. The whisperer had guided him, as he'd destroyed the guards, opened the doors at the prison.
“It is something you were born to do,” it told him. “It is a gift.”
Gulcher closed his eyes, said the names, and had a sensation that was alien to him and natural both, when he used the gift. A feeling in his hands. As if they were rubbery, extending impossibly from within. His astral hands, reaching out beyond his physical boundaries, stretching out toward the people at the slots. And swirling around them were the steam-shapes, the man-faced serpents, going where he directed them. Unseen by anyone but him.
“Hey, you two,” said the security bull, walking up to them. Gulcher opened his eyes a moment, glanced at the guy. Short, almost freakishly broad-shouldered, froggishly wide-mouthed. He closed his eyes again as the guy went on, “What's this, standing around waving your arms at people with your eyes closed? All this grinning and laughing? We don't want drugged-up people in here, this ain't no place to be tripping on meth.”
“Ha, he thinks we're on drugs there, uh, bro,” Jock said. A criminal's instinct keeping him from saying Gulcher's name out loud. “Tripping, he says!”
Gulcher was stretching his unseen astral hands out to the nearest ten people, reaching into a head, through a head; stretching on to the next head, into the head, through the head; on to the next one, his reach stretching through three heads, and on to the fourth, opening them up, to stream astral familiars, the man-faced serpents into them.
Someone put their hand on Gulcher's arm—and Gulcher ignored it.
“Hey, keep away from him!” Jock warned the security bull.
“Okay, we got one with a gun here—!”
Bang of a gunshot, and the touch on his arm went away. Gulcher didn't open his eyes. He felt a body hit the floor. He knew it was the stocky, broad-shouldered one, falling, a bullet in his head. Didn't need to see it to know.
“More enemies are coming... reach out to more puppets. “
Running feet, another gunshot, but he was ready. He opened his eyes and looked around, saw one clumsily sprawled dead man, another man crawling away, blood spreading across that funky paisley carpeting.
Men were running toward him, two of them with guns in their hands. Jock beside him saying, “Hey, man—you going to—”
Then it came together—and came rushing out. All those people, his puppets, rushing from between the slot machines at the men in the suits, the security bulls going down under a scrimmage of gamblers before they could fire a shot; a tumble of bodies, many of them old and fat and infirm, but young ones too, so many of them the casino guards were overwhelmed. And what they did then...
It wasn't Gulcher who made them do those things to the security bulls. He never told them to pluck out their eyes and squeeze their necks till the blood came out their mouths.
“You have tapped into their anger, “ came the whisper. “Their hidden anger flows free and drives them. “ Its voice oozed primal satisfaction.
Gulcher felt sick and had to look away. He didn't really care what happened to private pigs—but watching people get their faces pulled apart like that, naturally it's going to make you sick.
“What we do now?” Jock asked.
“We lock this place down, for a while, and get this mess taken care of.” “Sure to be people calling nine-one-one. Some is just watchin'. Not everyone's part of it.” “That's okay. You'll see. It's in the whole building, now. I can feel it.” Gulcher turned to Jock, grinning. “This casino is ours.”
***
BLEAK HAD ANCHORED THE cabin cruiser upriver; had come down here in the smaller boat. More prudent.
It was almost dawn. But here, in the shadow of a civilization, it was still dark. The sky was dark blue, showing aluminum gray of predawn; darkness draped the buildings.
As Bleak approached the rotting dock pilings, he smelled treated sewage, dead fish, decaying wood, tar, mildew. The reflection of a thin scythe of setting moon rippled with his passage, green-yellow on black. He looked back, once, to take in the baleful glower of the Manhattan skyline on the other side of the river.
His aluminum prow kissed the old, guano-frosted wooden ladder and he shipped the oars, clambered carefully forward, swearing when he nearly pitched into the drink. He grabbed the ladder, steadied himself, then tied up the boat with the painter. He could hear Shoella's ShadowComm contingent, fourteen of them up there, whispering on what remained of the old dock. He hoped no one would insist on using a familiar to probe his mind. He hated the feeling of a probe.
Bleak climbed the ladder, feeling them more clearly, up there, with every rung, their presences altering the ambient field of mind like fourteen iron spikes driven into the ground near an electromagnet. Only it wasn't a magnetic field; it was the apeiron field, as the Greek philosopher Anaximander had called it: the field of boundless essence that subtly took part in the other energy fields and gave birth to them; the pattern of undifferentiated consciousness from which all consciousness sprang. The apeiron was subtle yet endlessly powerful. It was the Hidden, the field traversed by planetary ghosts and other spirit beings; the energy which natural conjurers such as Bleak and the other members of the ShadowComm used as their medium of expression, each practitioner expressing himself in some personal, unique way.
Bleak climbed up onto the crumbling dock, put his hands in his coat pockets, facing New Jersey and the fourteen members of Shoella's La'hood. He was glad to be up here, where the breeze seemed fresher, pleasantly briny, coming in from the Verrazano Narrows way off to his left. But nervous, facing off with Shoella's bunch. He wasn't much liked by them.
Yorena flew at Bleak, first, just to make sure of him; to see if anyone was coming up the ladder behind him. The familiar flapped ponderously around him, leaving an acrid smell behind, and dropping a few pinfeathers; then flew back to Shoella. The creature settled on a craggy, tar-spackled post beside her: Yorena looked in profile like a big gull, except for the falconlike beak. The pattern of speckles on her chest seemed to change configuration as he looked at them.
“Was it really necessary that we all come?” asked Oliver, stepping forward. Like most of them, Giant and Pigeon Lady aside, Oliver was quite ordinary looking. A young man with heavy-lidded eyes, he wore a Mets baseball jacket and hat; someone you'd see on the subway and not give a second thought. Even the ferret on his shoulder, a familiar of sorts, didn't seem so very exotic. “I hate coming to this part of New Jersey.”
“Shoella thought it was necessary,” Bleak said, shrugging. “I'm not arguing with her. The CCA is making its move on us. They tried to get me today. They've got a new way to find us. Meaning we have to keep this meeting short.”
Oliver scowled. “Meaning we shouldn't have had it at all, you ask me. If they're after you, and you're here...” His right hand curled up as if gripping an unseen weapon—and it might just do that, since Oliver could throw energy bullets too. Only, he threw them in the manner of a hardball pitcher.
“Sounds like a risky meeting to me,” someone else in the group muttered. Giant, the little person.
The others, standing in a semicircle behind Shoella, were mostly a harmless-looking mix of men and women, only one over sixty—the Pigeon Lady. A bland appearance was camouflage, but not everyone bothered: young, pale Glory was dramatically Goth in her style, while Giant, a Hispanic near-dwarf, went out of his way to bristle with piercings, and studs in black leather. To Bleak he looked like an anthropomorphic hedgehog. He'd annoyed Giant, once, by calling him Sonic. But Giant's conspicuousness could end in the blink of an eye—he had the gift of calling up camouflage sprites and could vanish against the background if he chose.
“Maybe,” Bleak said, “this wasn't such a good idea. But the idea was to warn you—tell you about the detector, and maybe work together, figure some way to fly under this new radar of theirs...” He broke off, glanced at the sky, became aware that someone was looking at him from behind—from some distance away, up high. Pigeon Lady waddled up, grinning at him toothlessly, and he nodded to her, smiled, acknowledging the help she'd given him on the street. One of her pigeons fluttered from her shoulders, and in its wing wind he heard, “That's okay, I gots to help if I can. “
How did she get over here to Jersey, he wondered, with all those pigeons? They wouldn't let her on a subway with those things. Did they hide in her clothing?
“Shoella,” Bleak went on, talking to the group, “wanted you to hear it from me.” He turned and saw a light approaching in the air, still a ways off, over the river. It was almost lost in the lights of the Manhattan skyline—as if one of those lights had detached from its skyscraper and come hunting.
Giant stepped forward. “You could be working with the feds.” A piping voice.
“You know that's bullshit, Giant. We don't have time for a mind probe. You see that light coming over the river?” Bleak pointed.
They all turned to look. A spotlight beam was probing down from the oncoming light; you could just make out the outline of a helicopter. Coming right at them, about two hundred yards away, sixty above.
“It's them and...they have a detector,” Glory said. The tense little woman, her head draped in black silk, trembling as she closed her kohled eyes—peering with her mind. “I can see it. I see the device in someone's hand! A little arrow!”
“There's something we can do,” Shoella said, looking coldly at Bleak. “If Gabriel really didn't bring them here on purpose...he'll help us deal with them.”
“Let's do it,” Bleak said, nodding.
“Everyone!” Shoella called, gesturing. They crowded around him—put Bleak right at the center. Shoella murmured to Yorena, who pulsed the plan to their minds.
Bleak felt the someone in the chopper looking right at him. Some familiarity around the edges: it might be Drake Zweig.
“They're CCA,” Glory muttered. “I've got that much.”
So the feds had found him already, Bleak realized, shaking his head. That agent Sarikosca, maybe. Zweig. Coming after him again...and they'd be calling in backup. Which meant the others, La'hood, could go down too. They might all get swept up, trucked away to some nameless detention center for their kind.
“So they did follow you here,” Oliver said disgustedly. “They're after you—and they'll get all of us!”
“I don't think they followed him,” Shoella put in. “They're just flying around the area using their little detector—and picked us up.”
“Let me shoot them down, Sho',” Giant said. “I've got a clear shot—they're almost in range.” He raised his arms, to call the lightning down.
“No,” said Bleak, shoving Giant's hands down. “The peeps in that chopper have been briefed all wrong about us. They're not to blame.”
“Don't f*cking touch me, Bleak.”
“Focus, dammit! If Glory can make an illusion...”
“I can try,” she said, gazing raptly at the CCA chopper, beginning to murmur to the Hidden. “But it won't hold for long.”
The chopper neared; the crowd of ShadowComm muttered to one another, looking around for somewhere to run to. But running would draw too much attention to them.
“Listen up!” Bleak said sharply. He'd sometimes commanded a platoon in Afghanistan, and the tone of authority came easily to him when he needed it. “Count to three, then everyone back away from me, leave me in the center! They've got the detector focused right on me.”
“No one show any power,” Shoella hissed. “Blank out till they move on!”
One, two, three—and they all drew back from Bleak. He drew power, massively and suddenly, so that he'd surge with energy. That should draw the CCA detector to fixate on him, over the others—and Bleak bolted. He ducked quickly away from the fourteen La'hood ShadowComms, becoming a human decoy.
Glory projected an illusion to the observers in the helicopter—the illusion lapped out like ripples in water, undulated through Bleak's mind: the La'hood group as a crowd of the homeless, partying drunkenly at dawn around a fire in an old oil barrel, waving bottles, all blurred with a sudden flurrying of pigeons. Easy to ignore them and focus on Bleak.
Already fixed on him, the detector tracked him as he pounded across the dock—he could sense someone looking at him from above, the detector arrow sometimes entering their line of sight.
Bleak was pounding away from the ShadowComm group, through darkness, up the pier to the street, hoping to lure the chopper away from La'hood—and hoping he didn't step through a hole in the rotting wooden deck, maybe break an ankle.
The helicopter's spotlight fixed him, stayed wobblingly with him. The chopper veered to follow as, sticking to the shadow of a building, he ran up the street, then cut left along the avenue paralleling the Hudson.
Not in great shape anymore, he thought, breathing hard as he got to the sidewalk. Second time I had to run from these bastards today. Not fit. Dial back my drinking.
“STAY WHERE YOU ARE,” boomed an amplified voice from overhead. “WE'RE SENDING A PATROL CAR. I REPEAT, STAY WHERE YOU ARE.”
A patrol car. Bleak heard the siren approaching off to his right. He wondered what lie CCA had told the police, to get them to detain him.
Puffing, he turned right, down a side street, saw what he was looking for, a PATH train entrance. If he could catch a train, he'd take it a couple stops, get out, and, if he was clear of them, maybe get a cab through the tunnel. Then—where? Get a subway to Brooklyn?
No, he shouldn't go see Cronin now. Not until he'd done a better job of losing these bloodhounds. Wasn't safe for Cronin.
He could hear the helicopter's engine, feel its wind stirring the hair on the back of his head, as he jumped down the stairwell, taking the first flight all at once, wincing as he struck, pounding down the next steps.
They hadn't planned this, he decided, slowing to stride into the station. Shoella was right, they must've been trying likely areas with the detector and just happened to catch the meeting's signal.
But Bleak knew that by the time the chopper got back, the fourteen La'hood ShadowComms would have gone in fourteen directions, slipping away, anonymously, into the city, with the skill of a lifetime's practice.
Except for Giant—who didn't need to scurry off. He could literally vanish.
They were probably safe for now. And chances were he could get out of a PATH station, down the line, before CCA called someone to cover its exits. Going underground ought to throw off their detector. With any luck, he'd lost them for the night.
Bleak paid, went past the kiosk into the train station just as an early-morning train was rushing up. He got aboard a train car with no one on it but a sleepy security guard heading for a job and settled back into a seat at the other end, catching his breath. Hoping he was right to figure the others had got away.
So where did he go now? He was tired. Needed rest. But where? He didn't feel safe going to his cabin cruiser. Nowhere to lay his head.
What was that line from the Bible? The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Me, he thought—only I'm not the Son of Man, I'm not the son of anyone. Going to have to be the sunless man. Hide in the dark for a while. Keep to the shadows.
That's what he was stuck with. Another quote came into his head—from a very different source, an old hippie rock band. What was that band's name? Knocked down, it gets to wearin' thin. They just won't let you be.
That's what it was like for Bleak. The feds wouldn't let him be. Their Remote Viewing division —early CCA, maybe—had come sniffing around in Afghanistan, hinting about Special Recruitment. He'd wondered how they knew about him—about his talents. Suspected that they'd set him up to leave the Rangers early. As if they had other uses for him and didn't want him on the firing line.
But he'd refused to play along, after the Rangers. He'd ducked out on them. Made a life for himself in New York City, where it was easy to vanish in the crowd. A sort of life, anyway.
It was hard for Gabriel Bleak to live like a normal human being. Couldn't keep a relationship long. Had to be secretive—which women hated. But if he wasn't secretive it was good-bye, Esme; good-bye, Laura; good-bye...Wendy.
The train hummed through the tunnel, windows flashing with passing lights, and Bleak realized he was clenching his fists, his knuckles white. He tried to relax, but he was seething with anger. Seething at having to run from that chopper; at being tracked by a spotlight from above. Forced to run like a panicked dog with its tail on fire.
He sang the tune to himself, '“Knocked down, it gets to wearin' thin. They just won't let you be.... “' Muttered, “What band was that...”
“That was the Grateful Dead,” said a voice near his ear. From some invisible entity.
“Go away!” Bleak said angrily. And felt it depart.
He was still burning inside. And he wasn't even sure whom he was angry at. Not at CCA—not particularly. Not at Shoella and her people, with their pointless suspicion of him. Not at the army, especially. Not at his parents...not exactly.
It was more like he was mad at all of them, and at himself, for the outsider life he had to live. It didn't make sense to be mad at yourself, he figured, for being what nature made you. But that's how you ended up feeling.
He was quietly but perpetually pissed off at who he was, and what he was, and how everyone around him dealt with it—or failed to.
It had been that way almost from the first night. The night he'd realized. The night he'd first looked deep into the Hidden. Years ago...