City Under the Moon (33 page)

“Hey, Chewbacca!” she yelled, causing Lon to feel a jolt of attraction to her. “You hear me?”

“How could I not?” Ilecko spat.

“I don’t know how they do it in fucking Transylvania, but in America you can’t just slit a man’s throat—“

Ilecko squatted over a clean, flat stretch of asphalt and turned his bag upside down, squeezing out a few drops of blood.

“The fuck are you doing?” she asked, shrinking from rage to curiosity.

The soldiers and officers leaned forward to get a better look, lowering their guns in the process. Lon tiptoed for an angle. Soon dozens of men were locked on the five drops of blood, waiting for some kind of performance. More soldiers approached, gazing around:
What are we looking at?

And then the blood began to move.

The droplets rolled ever so subtly against the curve of the street, away from the Trump Hotel’s steel globe, southeast toward the center of Columbus Circle. There was nothing natural about it. The blood was seeking the bloodline.

Ilecko stood and nodded toward the southeastern horizon. His powerful brow worked as a natural visor for his thin, inset eyes.

“We go that way!” hollered Tildascow.

The soldiers were still gawking at the creeping blood as commanding officers repeated Tildascow’s order: “Start clearing a path, let’s go!”

All at once, the soldiers moved with purpose. The southeast exit from Columbus Circle was onto Broadway, but the street was barricaded and packed with civilians. A massive tank creaked forward, its treads—

Ilecko collapsed.

Something had struck him in the head. Lon couldn’t see if he was okay; his greasy auburn hair shrouded his face. A baseball-sized stone lay by his side, thrown by a civilian in the park. A torrent followed, as the angry mob went into full-on riot. Rocks twanged off helicopter blades. Gunfire erupted, and everyone hurried to take cover.
Pop-pop-pop
and
plinks
as bullets hit nearby vehicles.

Someone tackled Lon, smacking him down onto his chin again. It was Mantle—Lon could smell beef jerky on his breath as he climbed on top of him. A bit Roman for Lon’s taste, but there were real bullets flying overhead.

His cheek was pressed into the freezing blacktop, but he could see under Mantle’s armpit as Tildascow flat-crawled to Ilecko, who batted her away when she touched his wound. Good sign that he was okay. He tried to sit up, but she forced him back down.

The wind shear from the Black Hawk diminished as it lifted off. A moment later, a shot hit the ground right next to them and a small bit of concrete hit his forehead, barely missing his eye. Mantle lowered his shoulder, covering Lon’s face and leaving him blind.

Scrambling—
bangs
and
plinks
—darkness—Mantle’s beef breath—

“Y’alright?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay ya’s ass
down
.”

“Not going any—“

Mantle let out an earsplitting whistle, causing Lon to flinch.

The sound of a powerful spray erupted, dwarfing a whole new wave of screams. They must have been using hoses on the crowd. The rocks rained down and the bullets kept flying.

Of one thing Lon was certain:
They weren’t going anywhere soon.

Seven

Presidential State Car

Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC

9:56 a.m.

It had gone better than expected, but that was no consolation.

Truesdale told the selection of congressmen what they intended to do, and how he had reconciled it with his feelings for the country, their careers and their humanity. They kept the men waiting for half an hour, giving them time to ingest the concept—and scream it out, if need be. The delay was Teddy’s idea, and it was a good one. By the time Weston arrived, he had a few defenders and a few slack jaws that might have been full of vitriol a couple of minutes earlier.

There had been posturing and pleading, realists and bleeding hearts, sympathies and oppositions. And, of course, a touch of the old die-hard partisanship, which Weston attributed to habit and swallowed gracefully.

It was a closed session with sealed transcripts. It would be someone else’s decision whether these recordings were ever released, some special prosecutor whose name would become synonymous with the largest mass murder in American history.

When he entered the Capitol SCIF secure room (he came to their home as a show of humility, and also to get some air), Weston immediately sensed the heavy gaze of James Brewer, the 93-year old president pro tempore of the Senate, whose family was out of touch and presumably still in Manhattan. Brewer’s eyes continued to press on his chest as he spoke, and as he answered questions. But Brewer remained silent as the oppositions were noted. The most aggressive dissent came, as expected, from a canned speech by the Republican Speaker of the House, Bob Hynds.

However, when Hynds inevitably put Weston on the ropes, it was Brewer who intervened on his behalf.

The old man’s voice was pained and weak, and so it should have been. He thanked the president for presenting his plan in a respectful manner. He said his heart was with the souls in Manhattan who were risking their lives to prevent this tragic resolution. And then he left the room.

The congressmen were sequestered now. Many of them would likely be preparing statements condemning his decision, hoping to salvage some kind of career in whatever the government would become after today. One of them might unofficially leak details of Operation Wolfsbane, but then the media was already speculating on doomsday scenarios. Wolfsbane would be just one more theory running the tickers on CNN and Fox News.

Traffic was slow-going from the Capitol to the White House. Protesters had jammed the streets. Weston wished he could join them. He would have liked to protest against werewolves too.

Despite September 11, 2001, Weston knew Americans weren’t prepared for this kind of hardship. They couldn’t comprehend the cruelty, the unfairness of a no-win scenario. Responsibility had become a forgotten myth. They sat back and ignored wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and famines, genocides and human rights atrocities all over the world, fostering international ill will that was becoming increasingly legitimate. Accountability? They’d turned to the government to fix a massive economic crisis borne of their own irresponsibility, and then they complained about the way it was handled. Patriotism? As long as it suited their schedule of Internet porn, rock climbing, Starbucks, video games and romance novels. Sure, the occasional Hurricane Katrina came along, but it was quickly knocked off the front page by the infidelities of a reality television couple.

And it wasn’t their fault, not at all. Their grandparents and great-grandparents had fought wars to defend their freedom. Two generations later, it wasn’t surprising that they’d become soft and unprepared. How could they brace for such wickedness when they’d never been exposed to it? When war was a channel you could turn off without getting off the couch?

So here they were, protesting. Against whom? Against what? Nature? Supernature? Against the networks for pre-empting their shows?

Any president takes office with the best of intentions and the highest of hopes, but by the end of the day, their legacy is mostly determined by luck. Who was going to be in the hot seat when the reckoning came?

William Weston’s luck had run out.

Allison Leslie, Alan Truesdale, and Rebekkah Luft sat beside Weston and Teddy in the presidential limousine. Their motorcade had slowed to a crawl, giving the mob a chance to flex their lungs.

Leslie fought back tears. Truesdale was stoic, his conflict resolved. Luft breathed anxiously—Weston could feel her waiting for an opportunity to talk him out of this. Some part of him was looking forward to that conversation. Maybe she had an alternative they hadn’t considered. Or maybe in convincing her that they had no choice, he’d convince himself.

“Did you hear the joke today?” Teddy asked.

Leslie and Luft were aghast at the notion of a joke. Weston hoped for his friend’s sake that it was going to be a good one.

Teddy, realizing he’d stepped in something, swallowed before he continued. “They’re saying the term ‘werewolf’ is politically incorrect. They’d now like to be referred to as ‘Lupine Americans.’”

Leslie recoiled. Luft gasped. Truesdale resisted.

But Weston lost the fight, and a chuckle slipped out. That broke the dam.

As the limo cleared the mob of protesters, the leaders of the country laughed their asses off.

Eight

Columbus Circle

10:24 a.m.

This city.

An arrogant enemy of nature.

Yannic Ilecko had seen pictures of New York in books at the university in Braşov, but nothing could prepare him for the reality of such a place. Monstrous steel buildings blocked the sky, vulgar concrete smothered the grass and the defiled air smelled of chemicals, body odor, and rot. And, of course, the barbaric American people were a plague unto themselves.

No wonder they were unprepared for the arrival of the beast.

He was hit by something. A crunch sounded as if it had come from inside his ear. And then he was on the ground, his skull ringing.

Perhaps he was rash in taking that man’s blood without explaining himself, but he preferred not to speak with these people. He wanted only to help them find Demetrius, let them do to him what they would, and then return home.

The blond woman. Foolish and rash. So very American. She had crawled on top of him as a human shield, but didn’t it mean that
she
was even more vulnerable?

The sensation of her closeness was… distracting. Her hair dangled from her cap, wet and cold from collected snowflakes. It was coarser than Violeta’s and had a more aggressive smell.

There was an attraction, however conflicted it might be, but it was different from any he’d ever felt. She was more like a
făptură
, an animal. Eager to establish dominance. Even now she lay upon him, her elbows on his shoulders in a manner intended to pin him on his stomach. Of course he could throw her off at any moment. Apparently that moment had not yet come.

“Are you okay?” she asked wetly into his ear.

“Yes.”

“We’re going to move. It’s going to happen very fast. You’ll stand up and there will be a transport vehicle to your right. You’re going in through the rear. Open door, one step up, half a meter off the ground. Dive in and keep your head down. Do you understand all of that?”

“Yes.”

She poked her head up, giving him his first unobstructed air in however long it had been. How was it possible that she wasn’t breathing heavily? There was no tension in her muscles, no fear in her voice. Could American training subvert human instincts?

“Go.”

She rolled off, and he did exactly as she’d instructed. The vehicle was a hulking behemoth of reinforced metal, a tan rectangular box atop three axles. He threw himself inside and landed on a hatched metal floor that suffered no response to his weight.

The woman was right behind him—he still wasn’t sure of her name, the sound of it tumbled in too many directions. The vehicle reversed quickly, inhaling snow, and then it jerked to a sudden stop for Lon and two of the soldiers they’d brought to Romania. The woman slammed the door shut with a heavy metallic thud.

“Let’s go!”

The vehicle lurched into a turn and they strapped themselves into the six dark, cushioned chairs. The interior consisted of tan canvas, green metal panels, and thick windows with round gun ports.

“FUBAR out there!“ yelled the talkative soldier.

“Can you tell how far he is?” she asked him, yelling over a torrent that sounded like hail hitting the vehicle.

“I can not.”

“But you can find him in a few hours?” she asked.

“For nine months I tracked his father.”

The soldiers whistled in despair.

“At least you found him,” the woman said. “It’s only an island, how far can he be? We’ll triangulate…“ She yelled at the driver: “Take us a few miles southeast!” and continued: “And then we’ll run that test again. You caught his father, you can catch him.”

“I did not ‘catch’ his father.”

The team fell silent, as they realized…

“What, he
let you
find him?”

The others dropped their heads. But the woman would not show fear. She gazed silently through the portal windows as their vehicle pushed slowly through the mob of wild Americans.

Nine

Broadway and 56th

Two Blocks Southeast of Columbus Circle

12:33 p.m.

“Give it some fucking gas!” Tildascow yelled.

Two hours to go two blocks. The sky had darkened, the snow thickened.

She’d ordered the driver to mow the civilians down. Twice, in fact, because he didn’t believe her the first time. Fuck, man, at least try to score some points. It’s goddamn
hard
to hit someone if they see you coming. And the Cougar wasn’t exactly a speed demon.

Every time they really got moving, they’d hit more abandoned cars. A passenger vehicle was hardly any resistance to this 6x6, 52,000-pound hulk of American piss, but the thick clusters of metal trash were slowing them down. And then the mob would catch up.

One guy was ramming the Cougar with a garbage can. A woman had climbed onto the hood, fallen off, and started back up. Someone was pounding on the window with a brick. Weapons everywhere—guns, knives, baseball bats—one guy was even wielding a sword and shield right out of a gladiator movie.

She’d hoped they’d have cleared the resistance by now.

“Can you track him from the sky?” she asked Ilecko.

Ilecko shrugged.

Fair enough, it wasn’t like he’d stalked the father from a fucking jetpack.

“What’s the Crash Hawk’s callsign?” she asked Jaguar, taking quick stock of her USAF-issued radio.

“Desperation One.”

Of course it is
. “Desperation One, this is November Zero Zero One, over.”

“This is Desperation, go ahead, over.” The pilot’s voice came tinny.

“We need an emergency extraction at 56
th
and Broadway. Can you get down here? Over.”