Dying Is My Business

Twenty-one

By the time we climbed out of the sewers and emerged from the field behind the brick ruins by the West Side Highway, storm clouds had rolled in to give the sky a gray, swollen overcast. Rain was coming. I could feel it in the soupy humidity that drew sweat from my pores. Was this the immortal storm Gregor had warned us about? Nothing about the dark clouds overhead seemed different from any I’d seen before. Whatever an immortal storm was, and whatever dangers it brought with it, I was pretty sure this wasn’t what the dragon had meant.

A dragon. I’d seen a living, breathing dragon under New York City. Yesterday I would have scoffed at the idea of dragons—had scoffed at it while reading The Ragana’s Revenge—yet everything that happened since then had been a crash course in just what was and wasn’t possible. It was as if I’d fallen through the rabbit hole directly into Elena De Voe’s head. Even the name of the Nethercity, Tsotha Zin, was like something out of her book, though I supposed even in the real world an ancient, magical city underneath New York wasn’t going to be named Boise. I promised myself that if I ever met Elena De Voe, I’d ask how much of her novel was fictional and how much was true.

We traveled east, trying to hail passing cabs, but with the sky threatening rain all the cabs were already taken. Bethany cursed and kept walking, keeping a tight grip on the box. Thornton limped stiffly beside her. The pedestrians on the sidewalk, instinctively sensing a wrongness about him, gave him a wide berth, even if they didn’t understand why. I was starting to envy them their blissful ignorance.

But I had my own situation to worry about. How was I going to convince Bethany and Thornton to give me the box? After everything they’d been through to keep it safe, would they give it up without a fight if they knew what I planned to do with it? However it happened, I was going to have to do it soon. Much sooner than I’d thought.

Because a sleek black sedan had been following us for blocks now, ever since we left the ruins. It hung back in traffic, trying to stay inconspicuous as it shadowed us around corners and down side streets, but my instincts knew when I was being followed. Worse, I recognized the car. I’d seen it before, just this morning, with a dark-eyed woman at the wheel.

How the hell did Underwood keep finding me? One time I could chalk up to bad luck, but this? This was the universe laughing at me, telling me that no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, I’d never be out from under the man’s heel. I’d made a deal with the devil, and if there was one thing I knew from watching old horror movies, it was that no one ever walked away from a deal with the devil.

Two men dressed in black appeared at the far end of the block, rounding the corner and walking toward us. They were too far away to see clearly, but from their size and the way they walked I recognized them right away: Tomo and Big Joe. I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. Their appearance had the inevitability of clockwork. Maddening, infuriating clockwork.

“Shit,” I said, stopping.

Bethany and Thornton stopped, too. “What is it?” she asked.

“We’re being followed.”

“What?” Bethany looked up and down the street, but she didn’t know what to look for, not the way I did.

There was no way to retreat with Underwood in the car behind us, and no way forward with his two enforcers heading our way. I hoped Tomo and Big Joe hadn’t seen me yet, but that was unlikely. They were professionals. They knew exactly who they were looking for. Probably, they’d spotted me the moment they turned the corner. We had to get off the street. I needed someplace close to duck into. I glanced around desperately and spotted an auto body shop twenty feet away, its retractable garage door open to reveal an enclosed workspace that stretched deep into the building. I took Bethany and Thornton by the arm and pushed them toward the shop. “This way. Quickly.”

“Trent, who’s following us?” Bethany demanded.

“Someone dangerous,” I said. “Now move.”

Inside, the auto body shop was wide enough to hold three cars side by side, though there was only one there at the moment, its hood up and its deconstructed engine exposed like entrails. Next to it, a young man in his early twenties sat on a folding metal chair, eating his lunch out of a Chinese restaurant’s Styrofoam container. It wasn’t the perfect hiding place, it would have been better if no one saw us at all, but it would have to do. We were running out of time.

The young man looked up from his meal as we entered the auto body shop, noisily sucking a lo mein noodle into his mouth. He was scrawny, with an unruly mess of dirty-blond hair and a sleeve of tattoos down each arm. His ears were pierced with open metal spools that stretched his earlobes into big fleshy hoops. The patch on his shirt was embroidered with the name Chaz. We only had his attention for a moment before he dismissed us by looking down at his noodles again. “If you need your car worked on, come back in half an hour. Everyone’s out to lunch.”

“Is there a back door to this place?” I asked

That caught his attention. He looked up again, confused. “Huh?”

“A back door, Chaz,” I repeated, annoyed. I scanned the shop. It was small and cluttered. I didn’t see any doors in back. “Or how about another room, the office, anything that’s away from the street?”

He put his Styrofoam container on the floor under his chair and stood up slowly. “Who are you? What are you talking about?”

We were getting nowhere fast. I glanced through the open garage door at the sidewalk outside. How far away were Tomo and Big Joe now? What about Underwood? I waved Bethany and Thornton to the back of the shop, and they retreated to the far wall. It would have to be enough.

“Sorry, Chaz, but if you know what’s good for you, you’re going to have to go.” I nodded toward the open door. “Trust me, in a couple of minutes you’re going to wish you weren’t here anyway.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Chaz demanded. His confusion was making him angry. He puffed up his chest like a frog trying to look bigger than it was. “You think you’re gonna rob this place? Well, think again, motherfucker!” He started to reach for a metal lug wrench sitting on the car engine.

I didn’t have time for this. I got to him before he reached the lug wrench. I hooked two fingers through the large, stretched hoop of his earlobe and pulled, dragging him toward the doorway.

“Ow! Ow! What the fuck, man?”

I pushed him out onto the sidewalk. “If you want to keep living, Chaz, you’ll walk away from here and won’t stop until you hit the river.”

“Yo, back it the fuck up!” he raged, rubbing his sore ear. “You pull that shit again and I’ll beat your punk ass down!” It was empty bluster, I could tell from the way he tilted on his feet, ready to move away from me, not toward me. I’d spooked him. Now he was more bark than bite.

“Chaz,” I said calmly, making sure to call him by his name again. It was an old con-man trick, or so I’d been told. Keep using the mark’s name and they lower their guard. “Chaz, I don’t have time to tell you how much danger you’re in. You just need to run.” I pulled the gun halfway out of my coat pocket, just enough to give him a peek at it. “So run.”

He stared at the gun. Apparently that was all he needed to finally send him sprinting down the sidewalk.

There was a key box on the wall next to the doorway, the key still in it. I turned the key, and the garage door motor on the ceiling groaned to life. The door rolled down and hit the sidewalk with a solid, comforting clang.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Bethany demanded. “Who’s out there?”

“How many are there?” Thornton asked.

I walked toward the back of the auto body shop, where they were waiting. “Bethany, I’m going to need you to give me the box.”

“Forget it. I already told you I’m not letting this thing out of my sight again,” she said. “What’s this about? What’s happening?”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” I said. “The people who are coming are much, much worse than you can imagine. They’re going to take the box from you by force if they have the chance. But if you give it to me, I can do something about it.”

“Who are they? How do you know them?”

“Bethany—”

“Damn it, Trent, tell me what’s going on!”

A tension headache stabbed my temples like a knife. Why did she have to be so damn infuriating? We didn’t have time for this. It wouldn’t take long for Tomo and Big Joe to figure out where we were. That was their job, what they were good at. They hunted people on Underwood’s orders, and when they found them, they did terrible things to them. “Just give me the damn box,” I said, and tried to grab it out of her hand.

She jumped back, dropping the box on the floor behind her. In a flash, the Endymion wand shot out of her sleeve and into her hand. At the same time, instinctively, I pulled my gun out of my coat. We stood in a silent standoff for a moment, Bethany aiming her wand at me, me aiming my gun at her.

Thornton’s eyes went wide. “Whoa, whoa, what the hell?”

I ignored him. “Drop the wand, Bethany.”

“Sooner or later I’m going to have to trust you again. That’s what you said,” she said bitterly. “I should have trusted my instincts. It was no accident you were at that warehouse.”

“Guys, come on,” Thornton pleaded. “We’re on the same side, here.”

“No, we’re not,” Bethany said. “It was all a lie, wasn’t it, Trent? You were after the box all along.”

Thornton turned to me, shocked. “Is that true?”

I swallowed. It went down like broken glass. “Yes,” I said, “but it’s not the whole—”

Bethany snapped her wrist. A jagged, white arc of energy burst out of the Endymion wand’s tip and instantly struck my forehead. It felt like a slight electric shock, the kind you get when you touch metal on a cold day, and then … nothing happened.

“The sleep spell won’t work on me,” I said. “I don’t sleep.”

Her face fell. I expected anger, or defiance, but mostly what I saw was disappointment. Somehow that was worse. It stung me deep in my chest. I clamped down on it, forced myself to stay cold and focused. I’d gotten pretty good at that over the past year, so how come it was so damn hard to do now?

She lowered the wand and let it fall to the floor. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’ve got something hanging over my head, something bad, and the box is the only leverage I’ve got,” I said. “Please, just step away from it so I can pick it up. You too, Thornton.”

Thornton didn’t move an inch. His face was stony, defiant. “Make me, asshole.”

Bethany didn’t move, either. “What happens once you have the box? You kill us?”

“Good luck trying,” Thornton said.

“Once I have it, I’ll leave, I promise. I don’t want to hurt anyone.” I lowered the gun to show them I meant what I said.

It was a mistake. Thornton immediately changed into wolf form, and this time I saw it happen. In an instant, his human form melted like water and re-formed itself as the timber wolf. But because he acted so quickly, he hadn’t taken off his coat and clothes first. The material stretched and tore around him, dangling in strips off his back and clinging tightly to his haunches and hind legs. He let out an angry growl, but he was too weak and too tangled in his clothes to do anything but limp over and nudge at me feebly with his snout in an attempt to knock me over. He bit my leg, but his jaws were too frail to give the bite any power and his teeth didn’t even penetrate my jeans. I sighed. Seeing the once formidable wolf reduced to this was heartbreaking.

“Stop,” I said softly. “Thornton, just stop.”

The wolf backed away, growling hoarsely. He stumbled, fell onto his side in the shadow of the car, and remained there, drained and depleted, his eyes still fixed angrily on me. The lights on the amulet pulsed weakly.

Bethany reached for her cargo vest, but I lifted the gun again and she stopped.

“Bethany, please,” I said. “Just step away from the box. I don’t want to hurt you.”

She moved to stand in front of the box, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin defiantly. “That’s funny, coming from someone pointing a gun in my face. No, if you want the box, this time you’re going to have to pull the trigger.”

She wasn’t bluffing. Bethany wasn’t the bluffing kind. She would die to protect that goddamn box. She was brave and dedicated, I’d give her that. She had been since the moment I’d met her. I respected her for it. In another world, one that was more just, we could have been good friends. I would have liked that, but there was no hope of it now, not after this.

I thought about all the terrible things Underwood had manipulated me into doing, and all the while I’d naively believed he’d get the answers I wanted in return. I thought about the chair with the straps, and the drain in the floor, and the monster I worked for, and knew it couldn’t go on like this. I had to get out, and the box was my only ticket. I swallowed, my throat dry as sandpaper. My palms were sweaty against the grip of the gun. My finger trembled on the trigger. I’d been so sure about what I had to do, but now that the moment was here it felt like everything was unraveling, spinning out of control. It shouldn’t have come to this. There should have been another way, but I was so used to acting alone, so used to relying on the intimidating power of a gun to get what I wanted, that, ironically, I’d fallen back on what I’d learned from Underwood. But my training hadn’t prepared me for this, for pointing a gun at the only people who’d ever treated me with kindness.

I guess you can only wonder if you’re a monster so many times before you become one.

Bethany must have read the conflicting emotions in my face because her tone softened. “Whatever’s going on, whatever’s hanging over your head, this isn’t the way.”

But it was too late now. After you pull your gun on someone, there’s no going back. “Just hand over the box, okay?”

“Why?” she demanded, incredulous. “What could you possibly want with it?”

“I’m going to destroy it,” I said. “It’s the only way out for me, and believe it or not, for you, too. Destroying that thing is the only way any of us will be safe.”

Her reaction surprised me. She shook her head. She looked almost sorry for me. “You can’t.”

“Watch me,” I told her.

“Trent, just put the gun down and we can talk about this. Don’t you think others have tried to destroy what’s in this box? Hell, I would destroy it myself if I could, but it can’t be destroyed. It just heals itself, puts itself back together again. It’s like you that way.”

I stared at the box on the floor by her feet. “It’s alive?”

At that moment, the garage door motor roared, startling me. The door rolled up, revealing Chaz standing on the sidewalk outside. He grimaced at us as he pulled his key out of a key box on the outside wall.

He wasn’t alone. Big Joe held Chaz tightly by the arm. Beside him, Tomo flashed me a malicious, triumphant grin, and said, “Why are you always runnin’ away from us, T-Bag? Don’t you wanna play with your friends no more?”