Then three more demons came at her, and she killed them with ease.
She looked through the doorway. “We’re clear. For now.” She rushed to a glass case, broke it with the hilt of one of her swords, and grabbed a bow and a quiver with arrows. “But there are more outside. Many more. It won’t take them long to figure out there are people in here.” She turned to us. “What?”
Raisa blinked. “Are you serious?”
“How did you do that?” I asked.
Keisha swung the quiver and the bow across her shoulders. “I don’t know. I just took the swords and did it.”
“Have you had any training before?” Greg asked.
Frowning, Keisha took a velvet cloth hidden under one of the tables and cleaned her swords. “No.”
“That’s odd,” Greg whispered.
“It sure is, but we don’t have time to wonder about it,” I said, knowing there were odder things in this world than a girl who suddenly could fight without any training. “We need to find a way out of here. Out of the city possibly.”
“I know,” Keisha said. “There’s a room downstairs in the basement where precious items and artifacts are stored. The room has a corridor that leads to a door into an alley. They bring valuable stuff through there. We could get away that way.”
“If the alley is clear,” I added.
“If it’s not, I’ll make it clear,” she said, not an ounce of doubt in her voice.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Raisa said, clutching her dagger as if she were a warrior too.
“Lead the way.” Greg walked to the back door.
“Wait.” Keisha went to another glass shelf. She broke it, picked a leather belt from a hook, fastened it around her waist, and then took a dagger from the wall and slid it into her new belt. Next, she caught a long sword from the wall, placed it inside a scabbard, and hung it on her belt too. “Now I’m ready.”
I stared at her. She had three swords, a dagger, and a bow and arrows, while I held only one meager dagger in my hand.
Holy shit.
Keisha rushed to the back door and led us through a corridor. At the end, there was an employee’s only door. She took her name tag from her shirt and turned it, revealing a card. She slid it in the card reader, and the door popped open.
Once we were all in, Greg closed the door, making sure it was locked. Keisha looked like she knew where she was going, so when she climbed down two sets of stairs and continued through a long corridor, I didn’t question it. However, I did look through a couple of doors with small glass windows. People cowered inside those rooms, hiding for dear life.
Keisha stopped in front of a white door with no glass windows. She used her card to open it and stepped aside, letting us enter before her.
Lights flickered on, probably due to a motion sensor, and I looked around my mouth open. The room was large—not as large as the one at the Metropolitan or the former MoMa, but still large—and filled with paintings, rugs, books, mirrors, statues, other artifacts and rarities, and many boxes.
“Through here,” Keisha said, taking the lead again. We weaved around the items and boxes, careful not to touch anything.
We reached the back door, and Keisha turned to us. “This door leads to stairs up, then to another outside door. I’ll go up and check if the alley is clear.”
Without waiting for an answer, Keisha vanished behind the door.
Raisa sagged against the wall beside the door and looked at me, a shocked gleam still in her eyes. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
Instinctively, I reached for a strand of my hair, but before I could start twirling it around my finger, I realized what I was doing and lowered my hand. “No,” I said. I hoped she wouldn’t notice the quiver in my voice. “I have no idea.”
“How about you?” she asked Greg.
Beside us, Greg ran his eyes over the axe he had gotten from upstairs. It looked heavy and deadly and had a thick hilt and sharp blade.
“I have seen bats before, but not this many. However, I have never seen the other creatures. I wonder what they are.”
“How about Keisha?” Raisa asked. “I’m still stunned. Did you see what she could do? I mean, I wasn’t imagining it, was I?”
“I’m shocked too, but wow,” Greg said. “I’m also impressed.”
I was impressed and curious. I saw her eyes flashing—or I thought I did—right before she turned into Bruce Lee. That wasn’t a natural thing.
Raisa grabbed her phone from her purse. “Great, no signal.”
“What were you going to do?” I asked.
“Search about this mess online.”
“Oh.” Greg’s eyes widened. He reached for a walkie-talkie radio on his belt and turned it on.
“… hundreds of them. Maybe thousands? I don’t know.” The voice coming from the speaker was shaky. “I’ve never seen creatures like these. They destroyed Central Park, Rockefeller Center, and Union Square. NYU is also in bad shape.”
A new voice spoke. “Brooklyn is on fire.” My stomach revolted. I had seen demons and fire in a vision once before, a vision that came true. Omi, the god of war, had been in that vision. “I would say eighty percent of Brooklyn is on fire.”
“Same with the Bronx,” another man said. “We have the creatures and fire. Fire coming from the sky.”
Feeling sick, I leaned against a pile of heavy wooden crates. Fire coming from the sky. Oh, God, Omi really was in New York City.
“Fire from the sky?” one of them asked.
“I’m not kidding,” answered the one in the Bronx. “Wait. Dude!" A huge boom came from the walkie-talkie. “Helicopter down! It was like … like the fire was sent directly to it. From above.” He paused. “Holy shit!” A second explosion boomed. “Two other helicopters down.”
Greg spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Is this happening to any other city in the world?”
“Not that I know of,” the first man said. “But then, we’re stranded with little communication, under attack, and we have no idea what’s happening.”
“They entered the building,” one of them said. “I’ve … I’ve gotta run.”
He probably ran, leaving the radio turned on and his channel open, because we heard the demons advancing on him, growling, breaking everything, and then his screams. His screams fell silent; we could only hear the shuffling of the demons among what sounded like breaking wood, probably furniture.
The radio stayed muted for a long time.
Raisa looked at me with tears in her wide eyes. I took her hand and squeezed it.
“God be with us,” the first man we heard said.
“It’s not clear,” Keisha said, opening the door. The three of us squealed and jumped. She looked at us as if we had gone nuts. “What?”
I told her what we learned from the walkie-talkie, which was now silent.
She frowned. “I didn’t see fire up there, but it may be a matter of time.”
“So we need to move now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. There are many monsters up there. I can’t take them all alone. We wouldn’t make it ten feet out of the alley.”
Greg let go of his axe and crossed his arms. “That’s not good.”