“I don’t know either some days. But I don’t do it and the only reason I think I’d ever do it would be to take down the Angra.”
“You think.”
“Yeah. I think.”
I look at her.
“Serious enough for you?”
She nods.
“Enough,” she says. Then, “Are you really getting a million dollars for working on the mission?”
“I wish. I got talked down to five--five.”
“Fifty--five thousand?”
“Five hundred and fifty.”
“Holy shit.”
“I’m a special case. And I had the big weapon, the 8 Ball, so I told them I wanted to be paid like a defense contractor.”
“Wow,” says Sola. “No wonder Wells hates you.”
“Imagine how much more he’ll hate me when he has to hand me the check.”
“Don’t forget to get me those psych forms.”
“Sure. I’ll do them tonight.”
“If you girls have finished gossiping it would be awfully nice if you joined the rest of us on the mission,” says Wells.
Sola snaps to attention.
“Yes, sir. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he says. “Just do your job. Go back with the others, Sola. It’s obvious I can’t leave you children alone together.”
Sola goes back and disappears into the middle of the Vigil crew. Lots of grins and quiet chuckles back there. Law enforcement. It’s like high school with better guns.
“You don’t have to do that to her,” I say.
“Don’t tell me how to run my -people,” Wells says.
“Aren’t I one of your -people now?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure you are a person. Lots of things can walk on two legs. Monkeys. Dogs. Bears.”
“You should have said parrots. Those others can’t talk.”
“I know. Just wishful thinking on my part.”
We’re well down the spur line now, heading to a dead end. There’s nothing and no one down here.
Wells turns to his team.
“Anything, anyone? Life readings? Heat signatures? Any signs of Angra ritual marks or bodies?”
A few “No sirs” come from the back. Then a high--pitched whoop from somewhere. Like a howler monkey, but quiet. Then comes chattering, like a hundred -people caught in the snow, their teeth tapping together. A scrabbling at the edges of the room. -People look at their feet, checking for rats. I can hear breathing all around us.
“Take off your goggles,” I say to Wells. “And tell them to do the same.”
“Something’s coming. I’m going to light this place up.”
“Don’t you dare,” he says.
That’s when the first person screams.
I say, “Wells!”
“Goggles off,” he yells.
I don’t wait to see who obeys the order. My hoodoo isn’t subtle, but I figure that the tunnel is big enough to try it. I bark some Hellion and fire explodes across the ceiling. A lucky shot, as it turns out, since it knocks twenty or thirty of Saint Nick’s chop--shop -people off the roof of the tunnel down onto the tracks like sizzling lunch meat. After that, it’s the O.K. Corral. The Vigil crew opens up with their weird angel tech guns, blowing bolts of purple light into Saint Nick’s creations. But it barely slows them.
A -couple of chop shops rush me. One is clacking his broken teeth together like he’s gnawing his way through drywall. The other comes at me like a fucking velociraptor, his hands held out like claws, his legs pumping like pistons.
It’s like a night back in the arena, where I fought for most of my time in Hell. By instinct, I pull out the na’at and snap it open like a spear with a curved sword on the end. Broken Teeth is closest, all fangs and milky red eyes. I slice the na’at through the air and off pops his head, rolling away in the subway tide pool. I start to do the same to the velociraptor when I get a stab of paranoia. If Wells really thinks I’m Saint Nick, what’s tossing heads everywhere going to tell him?
I peg the velociraptor in the chest and angle the grip of the na’at up, forcing him to the ground. Then I pull the Colt and shoot him in the head. It’s a relief when he stays down.
I glance at Wells’s -people. They’re holding off the crazies and even have a few of them down on their backs, but each one takes a dozen or more shots.
I plug a -couple more crazies between the eyes. It seems to put them down nicely. Too bad I don’t have a hundred bullets.
More chop shops pour from the back of the tunnel. The Colt runs out of shots fast, but there’s no time to reload. I put it in my waistband. There’s no point pulling the black blade. I’d just start taking heads like with the na’at. That leaves one thing.
The flames at the top of the tunnel are burning down and the place is growing dark again. I manifest my Gladius, my flaming angelic sword. Its bright white fire lights up the tunnel like a movie premiere downtown. Nothing on Earth can stand up to an angelic sword. I slice the nearest chop--shop killer nearly in half with one slash and wade into a crowd that’s surrounded Sola and Wells. There’s not a lot of strategy in this. No big battle plan. Just hunt and slash and keep the monsters off the nonmonsters for as long as I can.
Good thing these chop--shop types aren’t big on brains. They’re all either teeth or claws, which makes them pretty easy to take down. I put down a dozen fast and open a hole for Sola and Wells to run through. It doesn’t smell good, all burned meat and fried hair.
One of the Broken Teeth lands on my back and sinks his choppers into my neck. It’s not even like he’s biting me. It’s like he’s trying to chew right through my spine. It reminds me of something, but that’s not important right now because I can’t reach the asshole with my sword and I can feel blood—-my blood this time, not some Heavenly angel’s from the sky—-running down my back.
The biter twitches. Once. Twice and falls off. Wells and Sola keep firing into its body as it tries to get up. I wade into another crowd of them and slash away. It doesn’t take long for whatever part of their brains still works to cop to the idea that fire is bad and running is good. The ones still alive and on their feet take off away from the spur track, down one of the other rail lines, and disappear, making those howler-monkey whoops, claws still out and teeth still grinding.
I keep the Gladius burning until I’m good and certain they’re gone. Then let it go out. The night--vision gear is scattered all over the tunnel, so Wells’s -people pull out their flashlights. None of them say a word and most of the lights are on me. I guess they’ve never seen a Gladius before. Probably most of them never saw anything close to a real angel before. Must be a hell of time to see your first, even if he’s only half an angel.
I say, “Mind getting those goddamn lights out of my eyes?”
A few of the flashlights move off me and flash around the tunnel, looking for stray crazies. There are a lot of them on the ground, and some of them still look alive.
I go over to Wells.
“What the hell is it with those guns? They didn’t do shit.”
He holsters his gun.
“Of course they do. My -people took down more of them than you did with that flashy sword trick.”
“Yeah, after you shot them fifty times. What kind of half--assed weapons are those?”
“Nonlethals,” says Sola. “Keyed to stun the brain and muscular function of living organisms. I guess those things aren’t quite technically alive. Not the way we normally define it.”
I look at Wells.
“You brought nonlethals down here?”
He looks right back at me.
“We’re not here to slaughter. We’re looking for information and to capture anyone carrying out extranatural activities in the tunnels, whether it’s Saint Nick or an Angra sect.”
“Looks like you killed them pretty dead anyway.”
“Yes. A lousy necessity,” he says. He shouts down the tracks. “Does anyone have a live one?”
A voice comes down the tunnel.
“A -couple over here, sir.”
“Right. Bag them and get them back to Vigil headquarters right now. I want the Shonin to have a look at them.”
“Want to hear a theory? Two really,” I say.
“Make them fast,” says Wells.
“The Shonin said the chop--shop bodies might be something to house Qliphoth. The way the crazies were moving, remind you of anything?”
“It was a little strange. What are you getting at?”
“Eaters and Diggers. Two of the most dangerous Qliphoth. They’d be good guard dogs if you wanted to keep something safe.”
Wells watches his team wrap up the prisoners. They use some kind of expansion foam instead of cuffs on the arms and legs. Slide a harness with a rubber bit over each of their heads so they can’t bite. Then zipper them into body bags with ventilation holes.
“You could be right. We’ll let the Shonin decide.”
They set the prisoners on hoodoo platforms like floating stretchers and glide them down the way we came, four agents holding on to the body and two riding shotgun.
“Want to hear the second theory?”
“Go on.”
“We were ratted out.”
Wells sighs. A few of his -people continue to steal looks at me as they work.
“This again. You just said these things were guard dogs. You don’t warn guard dogs. You just leave them in the junkyard for kids climbing over the fence.”
“But what if they’re not here all the time? What if they were here just for us?”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe it does. A little, sir,” says Sola. “This is a maintenance spur. Crews must work here all the time, but none of them have reported any trouble. Yet when we showed up, the creatures attacked without hesitation.”
Wells looks up and down the track like he’s trying to see into the dark and find something to shoot down the theory.
“Without further evidence I don’t want either of you talking to anyone about this. Things are hard enough for these -people without putting the idea of a traitor in their heads.”
“Yes, sir,” says Sola.
Before I can say anything, one of Wells’s -people shouts down the tunnel.
“We have something up here.”
We move up to the marshals. One is staring at a video monitor. She guides a flexible line with a camera on the end into a hole in the wall. There isn’t any dirt or dust on the debris around the hole. It’s fresh. I know Wells notices it too because he gives me a “Don’t say a word” look.
“You see anything?” he says to the marshal.