Angelfire

TWENTY-TWO

COLLEEN

Okay, easy would’ve been too much to ask, I suppose. But I was surprised to find that a tiny piece of Pollyanna deep down in my soul was stunned that we hadn’t been able to just march in, have our lawyer talk to their lawyers, and march out again.

The postshock aura was a bitch; tiny ice crystals jogged and reeled in my eyes and ears and blood. But that burned off fast, leaving nothing but pure mad. The fact that there was no one to aim it at only made me madder.

Anger was safe. Angry, I wasn’t aware of the Tower looming behind us, playing out its miles of marionette string. Hell, I don’t know which was worse, seeing it or not seeing it. I may be dense as a post, but even I could feel something. Something more than just surprise that the Source had thrown us another curve, another something-we’d-never-seen-before-a tweaked building, for godsake.

Rock, scissors, paper. Anger cuts fear. Habit breaks anger. I swung into survival mode, checking resources and escape routes, assessing damage. Doc, Goldie, and Magritte were a mess. Enid was stone cold petrified. Cal was grim, purposeful, in control. He kept us moving, parting the sidewalk traffic with a look, making a hole through which I could drive our shell-shocked herd.

Once out of sight of the Tower, I caught up with him and paced him. “Was that it? Was that the Source?”

He shook his head, kept walking hard. His face was like stone. “I don’t know.”

“Goldie-”

“Later. Now, we need to get out of here.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Russo’s. We need to regroup.”

I nodded, looked around. “Russo’s gone, the feckless little shit.”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

I shut up and took point. I was still in the lead when we crossed the intersection of Washington and Wells, which meant I was first to confront the cotton candy wall. It looked different than Goldie described it-less like cotton candy and more like one of those computer-generated nebulas I’ve seen in science fiction movies.

I hesitated, glancing around to see if any natives were watching, and saw a familiar face. The Suit. And he’d brought friends. My senses came on line with a crackle of electricity; my spine felt as if it had grown rebar. They were armed-baseball bats, chains, knives. They were coming down Washington behind us, leaving very little room for friendly interpretation of their intentions. Traffic parted in front of them, people scurrying to get out of their way.

Cal had seen them, too. He’d drawn his sword and slowed up, putting himself in our rear guard.

I gauged the distance to the wall of red ick and plunged at it, hearing the others close on my heels. It was like running into a blizzard of electric red glitter. A wave of intense, stinging heat kissed my face. Surprised, I sucked in a breath of air and inhaled fire.

I twisted around and flung myself back toward the others, choking and gesturing for them to go anywhere but where I’d just been.

“This way!” Enid shouted, and darted up Wells to the right, into the pedestrian traffic.

The rest of us followed, sucking up under the eaves of the buildings. We had the advantage of a half a block of distance between our attackers and us and two guides who knew the neighborhood. We had the disadvantage of me. I felt as if I’d snorted fireworks; my lungs were still burning and my skin itched like a sonofabitch. They say your skin itches when you change… Nausea washed over me, but I plowed on, keeping pace with the others.

Enid and Magritte took point now, plowing and dodging through the people on the street, making a hole for the rest of us to slip through.

A shadow passed over us, pulling my eyes upward. Overhead, the red haze eddied as if in the wake of a large bird. I shivered and prayed it wasn’t dragons. That’d be about all we needed.

Ahead of me, Cal broke stride. “Who the hell is that?”

I faced front. Someone had appeared out of an alley in front of Enid. In the next second the guy grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him into the alley. Goldie and Magritte shot around the corner after him.

Adrenaline pumping, I hauled my crossbow out from under my jacket and bolted for the alley. When I cleared the corner with Doc and Cal hard on my heels, our guys were nowhere in sight. The stranger was crouched at mid-alley next to a large Dumpster. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and shades, and for a moment I thought it was Howard, until I realized that this was a full-scale model. He seemed to be unarmed.

He stood and waved us on. “C’mon, boys ’n’ girls!” His voice echoed strangely off the walls and rattled the fire escapes. “We don’t got time for proper intros.”

Good point. It was either him or a bunch of guys with baseball bats and chains. I lowered my crossbow and pounded down the alley, trying not to notice that my legs felt like licorice whips.

When I reached him, Mystery Man snagged me by the shoulder, wheeled me around the edge of the Dumpster, and shoved me down into a window well. Before I could catch my balance, someone grabbed me from below and pulled me into a cold, dark, musty hole. I opened my mouth to squawk, but a cool blue light flared practically in my face. It was balanced in Goldie’s palm. He lifted a finger to his lips. A second later Doc and Cal poured themselves down through the window well, followed by the Mystery Man. The window casement slammed shut behind them.

“This way.” Our guide crossed the basement in a few strides. We followed without question.

We climbed down farther into a subbasement, crawled (or floated) through a manufactured hole between the foundations of two buildings, then went up a flight of rickety metal stairs and out another window well. We crossed an alley, trespassed into the creepy backstage area of a defunct movie theater, and moved from there to lose ourselves in the sublevel of an abandoned office building.

There were times I was sure there were people along our route, but I couldn’t see anyone. Magritte and Goldie supplied our only light.

Once in the office building, our guide slowed to a stop. He’d long ago pulled off his shades, but only now did he turn to face us, tugging his hood back as he did. By Magritte’s light I could see he was young, maybe a little older than Enid. Skin the color of coffee with cream, eyes so dark brown they were almost purple.

Enid let out a sudden crack of laughter and threw his arms around the guy, squeezing him so hard I thought he’d break him in two. They went way back apparently, and there was much backslapping and bear-hugging to prove it. When that was done, Enid turned to the rest of us and introduced our rescuer as “Tone, one hell of a session man.”

I stood aside and watched as the guys shook hands all around, thanking him for the neat rescue, and Enid asked, “How’d you find us?”

“Funny about that,” Tone said. “We got this old guy in the ’hood that sort of passes for an oracle. He just seems to know all sorts of stuff that goes on downtown.”

“How?” asked Cal. “How would he know about us? How would he know you’d care?”

“Well, when devas come into this place, just about everybody knows-it sort of changes the vibe in the Red Zone.”

Goldie’s eyes rolled toward the layers of concrete over our heads. “There’s a disturbance in the Force, Luke.”

Tone gave him a glance. “Yeah, sorta like that. Anyway, when stuff like that happens, the old guy always seems to have the story. We ask him how he does it, he just smiles and says, ‘I got friends in high places.’ He told us about you guys when you first come in. Says you’ve got a deva and that you didn’t turn her over to the first scum bucket that comes along. That’s a remarkable thing, around here. Had to check it out. Seeing Enid again, man, that’s a pure surprise.”

“We need a place to sit down and do some serious thinking,” Cal said.

“Sure thing. You all ready to commence onward? Your lady there don’t look so good.”

Everyone turned to look at me. I was leaning against the handrail of a staircase that went up into nowhere. The sudden attention made me want to straighten up. Somehow the message got lost between my brain and my legs. I reeled.

Next thing I knew, Cal was standing in front of me, holding me upright. “You all right? Jesus, Doc, she looks like she’s been scalded.”

Doc was there in a breath, concern pinching his face. He took my hands from Cal, held them up to the weak light from above.

“I can’t see. Goldie …?”

Goldman pushed past Cal, bringing a neat little glow ball for Doc to see by. Doc murmured something in Russian and pressed a finger gently to the back of my hand. “Does that hurt?”

“Just a little. Look, I’m fine. Really. Just kind of winded. And I think Goldman’s cotton candy singed me a little. But I’m okay.” I flashed a weak, nervous smile.

Doc raised a hand to my face, brushing my upper lip. It came away smeared with blood. He looked to Cal.

“What is it?” asked Enid from behind Cal.

“Colleen’s hurt,” said Cal.

“I am not hurt,” I said. “I’ve got a bloody nose. Hasn’t anybody ever seen a bloody nose before?”

Tone was peering at me over Doc’s shoulder. “Man, you musta run into the firewall, huh? That’s gonna sting for a bit. We got stuff that’ll take care of it, though. And I suggest we move on now, if you can, miss, ’cause I can’t guarantee how safe it is down here.”

“The toughs?” Cal jerked his head back up toward where we’d left the Suit and company.

“Hell, no. That surface scum don’t come down here. Other things, though.”

Other things. I didn’t want to find out what kind of other things. “Can we go?” I asked.

Cal brushed hair off my forehead, his eyes searching my face, and something shivered in the air between us, making me wriggle inside. “Are you sure she’ll be all right?”

“Well, not a hundred percent sure,” said Tone. “But I’ve never seen anybody die from it.”

Cal nodded and put us back in motion, at my side every step of the way.

Tone and Enid used their travel time for catching up. You know: “Remember old Fly-by-Night Jones? Well, he got turned into a fruit bat.”

Okay, I’m kidding, but close. Tone let loose with a rush of what happened to the old crowd and who’d been turned into what and who’d just plain disappeared. It wasn’t pleasant. Enid was hearing bad news with practically every other word. This friend or that had gone missing, this family or that was scattered to the four winds, most of the places he called home had been blasted to rubble or looted or both. Weird-looking things were growing or roaming or had taken up residence in parts of their once mundane neighborhood. Made street gangs sound downright cordial.

We finally emerged out of the musty cellars into the cheery red light of day and took a look around. The street was filthy, covered with debris, garbage, and little dunes of blown dust that glittered with glass-normal, comforting urban decay.

“Where are we?” I asked Enid.

He smiled. “Near South Side. Home.”

There wasn’t much left of home. But there was something. The farther we went into the Near South Side, the more people we saw. Some of them recognized Enid and stuck to him, so that by the time we got to where we were going, we’d collected quite a handful of interested parties, musicians mostly.

Tone led us to a night club/restaurant on Wabash. Buddy Guy’s Legends. To Enid, this was something of a religious shrine. To Cal and me, it was the perfect bolt-hole-dark, warm, and inhabited by the first friendly faces we’d seen since we left the Preserve. In the restaurant, I fell into a chair at one of the tables, hoping I didn’t look as bad as I felt. My hopes were in vain. In a matter of minutes Doc had commandeered rags and water and some sort of curative liniment and was all over me with the stuff. I drank some sort of special tea that tasted like licorice and went down like slippery maple syrup.

Meanwhile, Tone told the story of our rescue with only the least bit of exaggeration. His audience didn’t seem either afraid or in awe of Magritte, and they applauded the fact that she hadn’t been lost to the Tough Guys.

Weird. It was almost like being back in the previously real world. Candlelight and lamplight reflected off polished tabletops, making the place feel real cozy. Of course, there’s nothing unusual about muted lamplight in a bar. There was a constant throb of rhythm in the air, too, as if a jukebox played somewhere out of sight.

Behind the long, curving bar was a chubby old fellow named Jelly and a stunningly beautiful young woman he introduced as Venus. I wondered if anyone around here kept the names they were born with. Tone, it turned out, was not short for Anthony, but a reference to the fact that Tone was a guitarist obsessed with the sound of his “axe.” The death of electricity had put a nasty crimp in his universe. He’d taken up the acoustic guitar, he told us, and was learning to play the saxophone from the neighborhood oracle.

Tone and his friends wrangled food and drink for us and for the restaurant’s other patrons. I didn’t see money or barter change hands, so I suspected it was less a restaurant than a neighborhood mission.

Not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but I did wonder where the food came from. Asking, I was told simply, “Grant Park.”

I drank the broth off some stew and carefully chewed up and swallowed some potatoes. My throat was sore, like it had been scoured with steel wool.

Cal didn’t eat. He asked questions. Foremost of which was what anybody knew about the Source or Storm or Dark or whatever they called it here. They said it was powerful, they said it was dangerous and terrifying and that they didn’t need to know any more about it than that. They did not say that it lived in a gleaming, glass tower at the corner of Randolph and Dearborn.

Naturally, they wanted to know things in return-like why were we so absurdly interested in something that really ought to be avoided at all costs-and Cal told them about what had happened in New York, and Boone’s Gap, and everywhere else along our trail. And he told them about Tina, about the fact that the world as we knew it was being invaded by a sort of metaphysical kudzu and that we were determined to find a way to stop it.

“Whoa, son, whoa!” Jelly interrupted Cal in mid-sentence, grasping the rim of the bar with both of his beefy hands as if it was trying to fly away. “You tellin’ us you’re trying to find the Storm itself?”

Cal nodded. “Yes. I don’t pretend to understand how, but it’s at the heart of this. At the center of the Change.”

“Shit,” said Tone, and Jelly added, “That’s crazy.”

Cal’s face didn’t change expression. If being accused of insanity undermined his self-confidence, it sure didn’t show.

Jelly said earnestly: “The Storm is bigger than we are, son. I don’t think any of us realizes just how much bigger.”

“Well, we’re not as small as we look,” Cal told him, and there was a sharp edge to his smile.

“Oh, yeah?” said Tone. “So when you find it, what’re you gonna do, stick that fancy sword in it? Shit, you can’t fight a damned tornado with that.”

“It’s not really a storm,” said Goldie quietly. He sat hunched over the bar, his hands around a steaming cup of chicory, Magritte hovering protectively at his side. “It’s … more than that. And it’s less than that. It has a core, a heart. That’s what we hope to stick a sword in. Figuratively speaking.”

“And you think it’s here?” Tone asked Enid, eyes narrowed. “Where? In the lake? In the underground? Riding the damned El? That’s fuckin’ crazy.”

Cal looked at Goldie, who dived back into his chicory.

Enid said: “I don’t know if it’s here. I do know that Primal Records is here and I come to get out of my contract with them.”

“Your contract?” repeated Tone, sitting back in his chair. “What d’you mean?”

Enid explained it all: the effect of the Change on his contract, how the contract bound him, the way the music could charm, could shield… could twist. “Cal’s gonna cut my music free and I’m gonna help him find his sister and cut her free. Maybe cut us all free.”

Tone laughed, raucous. “I don’t know which is more crazy, thinkin’ you can get someone back from the Storm, or thinkin’ you can get ’em back from Primal.”

Whatever Tone saw in Cal’s eyes cut his laughter off at the pass. “It sounds as if Enid isn’t the only musician with a … contractual problem.”

Tone lowered his eyes. “There’ve been others.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Cal. “Strange as it seems, the legal bindings in Enid’s contract are still in effect, they just work on a different level. In theory, if we confront the Primal executives, we can void the contract. Which is where we might need your help. Is there a safe way to get into the Chicago Media Arts Building?”

“You’re screwin’ with me, right? You ain’t goin’ in there.

Man, that thing’ll eat her alive.” He jerked his head in Magritte’s direction. “The rest of you it’ll just chew up and spit out.”

Cal shifted from one foot to the other like he’d borrowed some of Goldie’s bees. Made me wish he’d sit down. “What thing?” he asked.

Tone looked at him as if he’d dropped in from another planet. “Primal, what else?”

Cal held up his hands. “Wait a minute. Primal is a record company.”

“Primal is a monster.” Venus was perched on a stool at the end of Jelly’s bar, watching us. She shrugged. “Or a savior, or both-depending on how you look at it. I suppose if it weren’t for Primal, this city would’ve imploded on itself in the first week after. But it didn’t, because of whatever it is that Primal does.”

Cal turned slowly to look at her. “Primal generates the firewall?”

She nodded. “Somehow it keeps the Storm from reaching in here.”

“So Primal isn’t… the Storm. Isn’t related to the Storm.”

Our new acquaintances exchanged a series of glances that spoke volumes about the uncertainty of present-day life. Then Venus said, “I don’t see how that could be. Like I said, Primal keeps the Storm out.”

“Or at least it seems that way,” added Jelly. “Hell, I don’t think a one of us can pretend to know jack-diddly about anything these days. All we know is, when Primal’s Red Zone went up, the Storm went away.”

“But you think it’s a monster,” said Cal. “You hide from it-why?”

“Back in the beginning, we had some like her,” Venus said. She canted her head toward Magritte, who drifted closer to Goldie. “The Storm got some of them, then Primal put up that bloody canopy and it didn’t get any more. Right about the time we were thanking God for that, they started disappearing again. This time it was Primal doing the taking.”

Cal paled. “Why?”

“We don’t know,” said Jelly. “It just takes them whenever it gets the chance. It can’t suck them up like the Storm does, though, so it lures them or sends its goons after them.”

“The Tough Guys?” guessed Cal.

Tone curled his lip. “Surface scum.”

“But why would this Primal create the Red Zone?” asked Doc rocking forward in his chair. “What would it have to gain from putting this place under a bubble?”

“Maybe it’s hiding out, too,” said Magritte softly.

Tone was nodding. “A king in its castle.”

Or a spider in its web.

“But where’s it getting the power to do that?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. Damn, I was having trouble tracking suddenly-craving sleep. “If it’s all that powerful, why didn’t it take Magritte when it had the chance? We were right there. Standing out in the street like a bunch of gawking tourists. Hell, even I could feel…” I hesitated, not wanting to remember what I’d felt.

“I was jamming,” murmured Enid, his eyes on Cal’s face. He tugged at one of his dreadlocks, shaking the little course of bells at the end, pulsing out a rhythm. “I was jamming harder than I ever jammed in my life. Maybe it couldn’t reach past the music.”

“I think you were a surprise,” said Goldie. He was still sitting at the bar, aimlessly sloshing chicory around in his cup. “You’d been silent up till then. And we were being drawn in, right to them.”

That sent a jolt of slimy electricity up my spine. Damn that troll, Russo. If I ever saw him again, I was going to skin him, tan his hide, and wear it for a rain slicker.

Cal was shaking his head. “It, them… what are we talking about here? I’ll ask again: What is Primal?”

“One Voice in front of many,” mumbled Goldie. His own voice was flat, gray, all the normal colors leached out of it. From what I could see of his face, it matched.

I caught Doc’s eye and canted my head toward Goldie. He all right? I mouthed.

Doc’s expression did not ease my mind one bit. He got up and moved over to the bar. I watched for a moment as he put his head close to Goldie’s, their foreheads nearly touching. Viktor Lysenko, Guardian Angel. My lips smiled without me telling them to.

“What are we up against here?” Cal asked. “You say we’re facing a monster-do you mean that literally? We’d gotten the impression that Primal Records was still run by a group of people.”

Tone opened his eyes so wide, I could see the whites gleam in the dim light. “Who told you that?”

“Howard Russo, not in so many words.”

“Russo? Shit, he’s nobody you’d want to be givin’ head space too. That rodent sold out I don’t know how many devas before we got on to him.”

“I knew it,” I said. “I friggin’ knew it. He delivered us right to the front door. Like Chinese takeout.” I remembered five lousy words of Shakespeare. They twisted in my head: All the world’s a puppet theater.

Enid’s face had lost most of its color. “Why, Tone? Why would he?”

“T’save his own ass, I s’pose. He’s under contract, too, isn’t he?”

Cal sank into Doc’s chair and leaned across the table, eyes on Tone’s face. “What is Primal?”

“We don’t know.” Venus slid off her bar stool and moved to our table, her arms wrapped around herself as if keeping out a chill. “Says it was the first thing the Storm birthed.”

“Then you’ve seen it.”

“I came close one time,” she said. “Too damn close.”

“I seen it.”

The voice came from the darkest corner of the room, where a hallway fed back into the private quarters. I didn’t see anyone at first, then there was a shuffling sound and a dark figure moved unsteadily into the light of the room.

It was an old man. A tall, lean old man, a little stooped, hair grizzled white, clothes the same tones and colors as his skin-a walking, talking gingerbread man. Lamplight fell across his face. His eyes were completely white with cataracts. It’d been a long time since he’d seen anything. “Now, Papa…” said Venus.

“I seen it,” the old man insisted quietly.

“Who …?” Cal looked to Tone and gestured at the old guy.

“They call me Papa Sky,” the old man said. “You must be our travelers. Welcome to Legends.”