Angel Of The City (17 page)

She stares down at the money in her hand.
“It is now. I’m a whore.” Her lower lip begins to tremble. “I’m a whore.”

The door opens and the man steps out smiling
, but a look from me and he trips over himself trying to beat it down the stairs. He gets up only to run headlong into Dane coming up. She’s panting as she knocks him out of the way, sending him tumbling down the stairs.

“
Raid,” she says.

“
I thought you had the Blueshirts on the payroll?”

Her eyes are wide.
“Not Blueshirts, Counselors.”

I push Pen toward the stairs.
“Get Abby. Now.”

She wipes her eyes, nodding.
As she passes, I whisper in her ear. “And put the money in your pocket. Don’t say anything about it to Abby. She doesn’t have to know.”

When Pen is gone, I turn on Dane
, my knife in my hand and up against her throat as I slam her into the wall.

Barely a hint of fear flickers in her eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Ye gave us up!”

“
Don’t be an idiot. Would I come here to warn you, if I had?”

“
Ye and I booth know Counselors dinnae raid whorehouses.”

She smiles, in spite of
the blade at her neck. “She’s the Angel, isn’t she? That’s what they’re after.”

She grimaces as the edge
pressing harder into her flesh. “I didn’t sell you out.”

“
Nae? Then who?”

“
You’re making it awful hard to think.”

We lock eyes and I
pull the knife back—just an inch. A fine line of blood forms across her throat.

“
Corrina!” she shouts.

A dark-skinned girl comes running out of a near bedroom
.

“Where’s Buck?” Dane asks.

The girl
stares open-mouthed at the two of us.

“
Answer me!”

She
shakes her head. “I don’t know. I ain’t seen him all night.”

“
Neither have I, and I told him not to leave the house. He must have heard us in the parlor last night. Piece of shit. If I ever see him again I’ll have his balls in a jar.” She glares at me. “You’ve got your answer. Now, you going to cut my head off, or you going to get out of here?”

I
pull the knife away and slip it back into my pocket.

Dane presses the back of her hand against her neck
and looks dispassionately at the trace of blood. “Go on, get out. If they find the girl here we’re all dead. Get up to the roof. There’s a way out from there. Corrina will show you.”

“
What are you going to do?”

She pats back a tangle of frizzy blonde hair.
“I’m going downstairs to smooth talk a few Counselors and buy you a little time.”

“
It won’t work.”

“
Then I’ll suck their cocks. Now get out of here.”

Abby and Pen are waiting on the third floor. Abby
’s fear is unmistakable. She starts blurting out questions almost too fast for her mouth to keep up, but there’s no time for explanations. I grab an arm of each girl and push them along, following Corrina. She leads us to the back of the hallway and pulls down a hidden ladder from the ceiling. We scramble up behind her and through a trap door onto the roof.

The wind
has picked up, whipping around as I look out over the edge. Counselors, fifteen or twenty, have the building surrounded. There must be more inside, either listening to Dane’s soothing lies or getting their cocks sucked. Either way, we don’t have much time.

The girl, Corrina, shouts out to be heard over the wind. Sh
e’s standing near a large yellow tube on the opposite side of the building. The opening is maybe three feet wide. Pen and Abby shiver near her.

The street lamps illuminate the flexible, plastic tube as it runs down the side of the house and disappears into the building next to us.

“What is it?” I ask.

“
It’s where the construction guys threw their trash when they were remodeling. Blueshirts wouldn’t let them block the street with a trash bin, so they had to put it in the abandoned building.” She waves her hand at the rooftop. “Dane was going to turn this whole roof into a big open bedroom.”

“
Why?” Abby asks, unwisely interrupting.

Corrina shrugs.
“I don’t know. Some guys like doing it in the open. Anyway, they haven’t been back since the riots and besides, she ran out of money.”

Abby looks down. It
’s a three-story drop and fifty meters across. “You expect us to jump into that?”

“
Tuli and some of the other girls have done it,” she says, wrapping her thin robe tight around her. “’course they were all snorting dust at the time. Look, I don’t care what you do, but I got to get back down before Counselors come looking for me.”

“
All right. I’ll go first,” I say after Corrina disappears through the roof door.

“
Are you crazy?”

“
You have a better idea?”

Pen pushes her sister aside.
“I’ll go.”

Before Abby can stop her, she jumps up on the roof ledge and falls feet first through the tube.

“Pen!”

I leap up on the ledge.
Tuli and the other girls might have done it, but they didn’t just have surgery on their leg. “Count to five, then follow me,” I say to Abby, then jump in after her.

The first few meters are just like falling. I barely touch the sides, but then the speed decreases dramatically as my ass slides up against the tube. I must be crossing over to the next building. Even so, I
’m still moving at a good clip as I emerge from the other end of the tube and fall, tumbling into a pile of debris. Coal dust or not, I’m guessing Tuli and the others never repeated this stunt.

I can hear sobbing as I stand
, but Abby will be coming through soon, so I maneuver myself under the tube. A moment later, she comes flying out and I’m just able to get under her and break her fall before we both get sent tumbling backward. We land hard over a mound of old shingles and boards.

Other than a few scrapes and a painful left hip, I
’m ok and help Abby up. We find Pen lying on her side in the trash, gripping her injured leg and crying.

Abby rushes to her side.

“My leg. My leg,” Pen sobs.

I take out the vial of pain pills and push one in her mouth, but they don
’t work immediately and we have to get out of here. Pulling Devon’s tin from my coat, I shake a small amount onto the back of my hand and shove it under her nose.

Abby stares daggers at me but I ignore it
. A moment later I put Pen’s arm over my shoulder and help her up.

“
We have to leave. Now.”

The Counselor
’s attention remains focused on Dane’s place and we’re able to sneak out from the building without being seen. The riots have died down in this quarter and we have little difficulty making our way north and east.

It
’s a long, cold hike, but we make it a block from the Delphi border before I let them take a rest. The street is empty now, but if the rumors are right, the peace won’t last long. From here, we can easily make out the wall of brick and concrete rising six stories high. A large crane sits unmoving near it. Only the gates remain to be installed. When completed, it will divide the Aramaic from the Delphi quarter. A small army of Blueshirts and Counselors man a barricade in the opening. The Council may sit back and let the other quarters bleed themselves for a time, but the Garden District resides inside the Delphi and there is no way they will allow a mob anywhere near it.

Pen is groaning again and I pull us all into a narrow alley.

“Is there a tunnel?” Abby asks.

“
No, nothing goes under the wall, they’ve seen to that. There’s a tunnel two blocks farther on the other side that runs almost to the Bonifrei, but we’ll never get across now.”

“
Then what are we doing here?”

“
We’re waiting for dawn.”

“
What good will that do?” Abby asks.

“
Dawn will bring the mob,” I say, and stop her before she argues. “I know, so far we’ve been avoiding the riots, but right now we need them. If they can create enough chaos, we may be able to slip across the border.”

Pen is already lying on the ground and I cover her with my coat before sitting near her. Abby paces in the alley for several minutes before finally sitting on the other side of her sister. An hour passes, maybe two, before I hear the sounds of sleep from both of them. I watch the moon reflected in the slow moving clouds, and wait out the dawn.

I
t starts as a murmur; a low rumble that you feel more than hear. I have a narrow field of vision from the alley and the sound grows to a dull roar before I finally see them. Row upon row of men and women, armed with knives and clubs and machetes and even a few pistols, all moving along the street toward the barricades.

The bullhorns blare:
twenty-four hour curfew is in effect. All citizens are commanded to return to their homes. Resistance will be dealt with severely. A twenty-four hour curfew is in effect…

Weapons fire. Screams. But the mob doesn
’t retreat, it lurches forward. Angry, sweaty faces pass by in a trot. Death is small enough payment for a chance at revenge.

The noise wakes Pen and Abby. We rise and
cautiously peer around the corner. I was hoping the mob would push the Counselor line back at least a few blocks, but so far, they’ve stood firm. The wall is helping, causing the rioters to channel themselves toward the barricades and giving the Counselors an easy target.

I turn back to Pen and Abby.
“We can’t get through the street.”

“
This was stupid,” Pen says. She’s irritable, leaning against the wall and keeping her weight off her injured leg.

“
Thanks for the vote of confidence. Maybe we can’t get through, but we may be able to go over.” I grab Pen’s arm. “Abby, keep close behind us.”

“
Where are we going?”

“
To the crane.”

She gazes out at the towering structure rising above the churning, battling mass of humanity.
“You’re crazy.”

I don
’t argue as I drag Pen headlong into the moving mob.

For a while it looks like Abby
may be right. We’re able to enmesh ourselves in the rioters without difficulty, but they’re pushing and shoving so hard that more than once I almost fall to the ground with Pen on top of me. In a crowd of this size, that could prove fatal.

With my arms occupied helping to keep Pen up, I
’m left to kick out at anyone pressing in too close, dropping several under the crushing feet of the mob. After what seems like an eternity, the three of us make it to the base of the crane on this side of the wall. Now we can see the actual fighting.

A line of Counselors is
firing into the mob. Despite the carnage, some of the rioters make it through to hack away with crude blades and clubs. The air is filled with the sound of screams and curses and the acrid scent of gunpowder, almost overpowering the smell of the mountains of trash rotting in the distance. Blood pools in the street and splatters over the bodies of those already dead. It’s a melee, with little sign of ending soon.

Abby leans back, gasping. Her coat is torn and her hair disheveled. P
en is grimacing, her hand gripping her wounded leg. I reach into my pocket for the pain pills, but the bottle is gone. It must have fallen out in the mob. I still have Devon’s silver case and show it surreptitiously to Abby. She hesitates, but when she realizes it’s all we have, nods. Pen doesn’t even question it when I put a small amount under her nose. She sniffs and in a few moments, the look of pain recedes.

There
’s a cage tethered to the crane, used for carrying workers and supplies to the top of the wall. For now, no one has paid much attention to us, but I doubt our luck will hold out for long. I explain my idea to Abby.

“
You really are crazy. Do you even know how to operate one of these?”

I lie.
“I learned to run a hoist before I could shave. You and Pen get in, I’ll lift you up and onto the roof of the building across the street. From there it’s only one block over to the tunnel.”

“
And how are you going to get across?” Abby asks.

“
You let me worry about that.”

It isn
’t easy to convince her, but when the crowd starts pressing toward us once again, she relents and I help them into the cage. Operators don’t worry too much about securing their rigs between shifts. It’s not like someone is going to drive one away inconspicuously. I was prepared to jump start the crane if I had to, but the keys are still in the ignition.

Contrary to what I told
Abby, I have no idea how to operate one of these, but figure I have a few minutes to work it out before Counselors and the mob take notice of what I doing. Starting it up is easy enough and I only have to test two levers to figure out which one raises the cage. I have them high above the bloodshed when my grace period runs out.

I
’ve just found the control to swing the head of the crane when I feel hands gripping me and pulling me out of the rig’s cabin. Three men are cursing as they drag me out, kicking and punching as I fight back. The cage is hanging above the crowd, Pen and Abby yelling down at me. Peripherally, I can see a few Counselors raising their weapons toward the cage.

Hesitancy and uncertainty kill more Counselors than any other reason.

I don’t hesitate. Pulling my gun from my belt, I fire three shots in rapid succession, all finding their mark. I jump back in the operator cabin before the last body hits the ground, slamming the lever to the right with my fist. High above, the cage veers over the street and toward the building on the Delphi side of the wall. Gunfire follows, but all miss wide of the cage.

T
he rest of the mob has taken notice and they rush toward me. They don’t know if I’m with them or the Council and at this point, no one cares. I’m not from this quarter and that’s all that matters. When the cage is directly above the building, I lower it fast, so fast it hits the roof with a crash and rolls onto its side. I don’t have to hear Pen to know the pain she must be feeling.

I pull the key from the ignition and climb out of the cabin, just ahead of the grasping hands of the mob
. Scrambling, I start to ascend the metal lattice. A few shots from Counselors whiz over my head, but they have more pressing problems right now than a single escaping rioter and quickly turn their attention back to the mob.

Half way up, I take a quick look behind me to see several hundred people swarming over th
e machine like a colony of crazed ants. A few dozen men, yelling and swearing, are climbing up behind me. As I reach the boom and start to cross over the street, the crane begins to sway. Pen and Abby have managed to climb out of the wrecked cage and are standing on the roof of the building, Abby helping to hold Pen up. I wave and scream for them to get as far away from this end of the building as possible, just as the crane begins to topple forward.

I grip a cross bar in both hands as the end of the boom crashes into the building, blasting dust and shards of concrete high into the air.
The impact throws me from the boom and I slam hard onto the roof, rolling and tumbling. Something cracks in my chest. I’m trying to stand when I feel hands helping me up.

Abby is coughing, her face covered in white dust.
“Are you hurt?”

I
’m cradling my arm against my chest, but shake my head. “It’s nothing. Let’s get out of here.”

On the opposite side of the building, we find a fire escape. Between Pen
’s leg and my broken ribs, it’s a slow climb down, but when we finally reach the street, we find the main battle is now behind us.

Pen is groaning and Abby takes the silver case from my pocket and gives her another dose. She holds it up to me but I wave her away. The pain is tolerable
—barely—and I need to keep my head straight.

When we c
an move again, I lead them east another block to a ransacked store. The windows are shattered and the merchandise either broken into pieces or strewn out onto the street. We walk carefully over the broken glass.

“
What is this place?” Abby asks.

“
It’s an antique shop. At least it was. I came here occasionally to fence things Reed doesn’t handle. I hope Jacques got out before the mob.”

In the back room we find a refrigerator and take all the food and bottled water we can find. There isn
’t much. A false panel in the wall leads to the basement. It’s dank and haphazardly crammed with bookshelves, all of which are stacked high with what looks to be high-priced junk in various stages of disrepair. With Abby’s help, we push one bookshelf away from the wall, exposing a door.

“
Do you have a flashlight?” Abby says.

I fumble along the wall for the switch.
“Yes but we won’t need one.” I find the switch and lights along the base of the wall suddenly flicker on. “Jacques is near-sighted. He didn’t want to be stumbling in the dark if he ever had to make a run for it.”

“
Where does it go?” Abby asks.

“
About two blocks east. It opens into an old abandoned space no one has used for years.”

“
I need more medicine,” Pen says. She’s leaning up against the wall, her eyes glassy and unfocused.

Abby shakes her head.
“I think you’ve had enough for now.”

S
he takes her arm, but Pen pulls away. “My leg hurts. I’m not going anywhere until you give me some more medicine.”

“
It isn’t medicine, Pen; it’s coal dust. It’s a drug.”

But Pen simply stares at her, unmoving. Finally I take the silver box from Abby and give Pen a small amount, which she inhales instantly. Giving a last disdai
nful glare at her sister, she enters the tunnel.

The space
is damp and musty. I doubt Jacques has ever been here since installing the lights years ago. The walls are slowly disintegrating, with small roots already breaking through the concrete and rivulets of water following them into the tunnel to run down the walls and pool on the floor. We’ve slogged almost half way through when the lights suddenly go out.

“
What happened?” Abby asks.

I pull the flashlight from my coat pocket but the light is weak. The batteries are almost drained.
“Reinforcements must have arrived. They’re preparing to storm the Aramaic quarter. Standard procedure is to cut the electric to the area before infiltration. This block is probably on the same grid. Let’s keep moving. Once they’ve dispersed the riot, they’ll canvas the near streets looking for stragglers. When we get to the other side of the tunnel we’ll have to lay low until they finish up.”

The door at the other end of the tunnel is jammed and it takes Abby and I both to force it open.
The room beyond is a large space with a high ceiling. Two rows of crumbling benches run the length of the space with an aisle between them. There’s what’s left of a podium in front and on the wall, a large letter ‘t’, like the one gracing Devon’s book.

“
What is this place?” Abby asks.

“
No idea. I’ve only been here once before, when I had to get out of Jacques’ shop in a hurry a few years ago. There’s an abandoned warehouse above us but it must have been built much later.”

Pen sits carefully on one of the more substantial benches as Abby and I scour the area for more light. We find several candles among the debris and soon have enough light to get a better look at the place.

“It’s a church,” Pen says.

Abby and turn toward her.

“A church,” she repeats. “I remember seeing pictures of them in a book once. Daniel, the boy who took me to the junior prom—you remember him, Abby? His grandfather had all these old forbidden books that he used to like to show me.” She smiles. “Actually, I think he just liked having me sit next to him so he could put his hand on my knee, but I didn’t mind. He said that long ago, people would come to these places to be together.”

I look around.
“And do what?”

“
I don’t remember most of it. I didn’t pay attention all that much. I do remember him saying that they had a faith that when you died, you went to a better place.”

“
Go where?” Abby asks.

“
I don’t know. I said I didn’t listen that close.” She looks around the room, her expression glum, her eyes glassy from the dust. “It must have been nice though, to have faith in a future, something to look forward to. Not like us.”

“
Pen, don’t…”

“
Don’t what, face the truth? We’ll never have a normal life again, Abby. We’ll either be captured and killed, or spend the rest of our lives living like him.” She nods in my direction.

My
ribs are still throbbing and the conversation isn’t making me feel any better so I decide to take a look around. “I’m going up and see if I can make out what’s happening outside. Anyone want to come with me?”

Abby agrees but Pen says she
’s tired and just wants to rest. She asks for the coal dust just in case her leg begins hurting again. Abby objects, but it’s still the only thing we have for pain so I leave it with her.

A set of worm-eaten steps lead up to the ground level. We take two of the candles and make our way up carefully until we reach a landing with a partially destroyed door. One small push and the door falls away from its hinges to crash on the floor.
The space beyond is vast and empty, with high, industrial-looking windows boarded up from the outside. Fading light of the late afternoon filters in through the cracks.