Midnight Taxi Tango (21 page)

“Where are they?” I start after her.

Ginny pokes her head through the curtain. “Carlos.”

“I can't now, Ginny. I . . . I'll be back.”

Out on the street, a family strolls past: a mama with a baby carriage, three giggling little ones and a teenager fully immersed in her phone. The bodegas are beginning to close down for the evening. “I left them with Marie,” Sasha says. “But if Gregorio allied the Survivors with the Blattodeons, it means he went against Marie, which means . . .”

She's cut off by the teenage girl's scream. We whirl around, hands reaching for weapons. A man comes barreling past the family; one of the kids is sitting on his ass, looking stunned. Sasha moves first, stepping directly into his path and swinging up with a short sword I hadn't even seen her unsheathe. Her slice nearly rips the man in half—now the whole family is screaming and collecting each other as they hurry down the block. The man stumbles once, then drops to his knees. He flails forward, dark ichor seeping from Sasha's slash, and then buckles. Those pale nightmares stream off him in a sudden, relentless throng, and in seconds, Sasha is covered.

“No,” I gasp as Reza and I launch toward her.

My jacket is off, swatting the monsters from Sasha's arms and chest as Reza wipes them off her face. A few land on me, and I swat them away, ignoring the tiny pinprick of their pincers.

Two more roach guys round the corner as we're finishing up. “Let's move,” Reza says. She jumps in her Crown Vic and revs the engine.

“I'm okay,” Sasha whispers, seeing the fear in my eyes. “Come on.”

We both jump in the backseat and slam the door just as the first guy smashes up against it. Pale roaches splatter across the window, and then Reza peels off into oncoming traffic and a cacophony of horn blasts and tire screeches.

Reza

A
ssaulting a house isn't like delivering a pizza. You can't just double-park out front, roll up in there,
pop, pop,
and zip off. Not unless you have a fully locked and loaded team and body armor. And even then . . . Nah. I pull up on the corner of the quiet residential block in Kensington that Sasha directed me to. Oak trees swoosh in the chill, early spring breeze over parked hoop-dees and SUVs.

I almost have to physically restrain Sasha from jumping out of the car the second we stop. “Wait,” I say. “We can do this the right way or the wrong way, but if you fuck it up and go in hot, there's a lot less chance of your babies making it out alive.”

She freezes, already halfway out the door. Nods. Carlos, who had been about to open the other door, stops too.

“Someone needs to stay with the car.”

They look at each other, both restraining the urge to tell the other to stay.

I nod at Carlos. “You stay.”

“I don't know how to drive.”

“I'm not worried about a goddamn parking ticket, C,” I say, getting out. “I need to be sure no one runs off with it while we're inside. Can you do that?”

“My ba—”

“I know.” My voice leaves no room for argument. “And I will get them back. I promise.”

He slumps into the seat, and Sasha and I brisk-walk down the block past plain two-story houses and plain front lawns. “There a back entrance?”

She nods, every part of her tensed with the effort of not bursting forward in a fury of mama-love and destroying the whole world.

“You can handle the locks?”

She smiles dimly. “I still have a key.”

“Good. I'll take the front; you take the back. I don't need to tell you not to take any prisoners.”

She shakes her head one time and then slips into the shadows of the front yard and disappears behind the house. I see how this woman could own Carlos's heart. She moves with effortless grace, even this rattled. Also: she's a killer. It's all over her. There's no hesitation in her lethal flow, and I'm positive it's not just because of what's going on.

I soft-walk up the porch stairs and then my Glock is out, lowered casually by my hip and concealed from any chance passersby. I'm about to take the lock when I realize the door's slightly open.

Which is probably a bad thing.

Yes, a very bad thing indeed: the first splatter of blood I see is a handprint on the foyer wall. Beyond that, the living room is in shambles: overturned chairs, shattered glass. And bodies: three in this room. One's the older woman from the park, Marie. There are no bullet holes, I notice. Everyone involved wanted to stay discreet, and a single shot in this neighborhood would've brought a hundred cops. As it is, it's incredible the place isn't a crime scene, considering the battle that must've happened here. Sasha stands perfectly still in the middle of all the carnage. Our eyes meet, and for a terrible second, we just stare at each other.

Then she brushes past me and up the stairs, but I already
know, can feel it in the awful stillness of this house: the twins are gone.

• • •

In this dark inlet somewhere deep in Prospect Park, the Partymobile idles next to my Crown Vic. Carlos storms back and forth in the glare of their headlights, muttering to himself: “Something . . . We're missing . . . something . . . Fuck!”

Bri, Memo, and Rohan are spread out along the perimeter of the little clearing in the woods. Since everyone else is too busy freaking out, trying to make sense of shit, it's on me to make sure we're all safe in the meantime.

Kia sits in the Partymobile with Rigo. The door's open, and they both peer out as Sasha, Gio, and I huddle in the darkness, cobbling together a plan.

Or trying to.

“So what happened at the Survivors' safe house?” Gio asks.

“Marie was dead,” Sasha says. She looks like she's barely holding it together. Every couple seconds she gulps in a mouthful of air and wraps her arms tighter around herself. “One of our leaders. You saw her in the woods.”

Gio nods. “I remember.”

“Also six other Survivors.” She exhales, looks away. “And the twins were gone. My children.”

“I'm so sorry,” Gio says.

“Fuck!” Carlos yells. “Something . . .”

“And no roaches?” Rigo asks.

I shake my head. “But they came at us in Flatbush just now. And you by the river. If I hadn't put Rohan and Memo on Kia-detail, this would be an even grimmer situation. Sasha, how many Survivors are there total?”

“We were eighteen,” Sasha says. “Now eleven.”

Gio shakes his head. “Ten. Blaine got got.”

“Always hated that prick,” Sasha mutters.

“And the remaining ten are probably gonna be siding with Gregorio?” I ask.

Sasha scowls. “I'm not so sure. The lines haven't been clear for a while, just a lotta infighting and politicking and bullshit, to be honest. And only about seven of those ten are really much use in a fight. A few don't even really come around much, so I doubt he'd bother tracking them down for his coup. Especially if it was off-the-cuff like this. I don't think he's been planning this long—probably the Blatts reached out to him sometime after the meeting this morning. Most likely he grabbed up Blaine and one or two others and ran.”

Best to prepare for the worst. “We'll put them at seven, then. The question is where.”

“Listen though,” Gio says. “Carlos is right. They're acting different. It's part of why we came back . . .” His voice trails off, and he casts a pained glanced at Kia. She looks away. “Finally. We got word from a contact here that there was a lot of Blattodeon activity—more than their usual now-and-then kidnapping. Something's different.”

“It's true.” Rigo climbs out of the Partymobile and stands next to Gio. “And this thing where they throw their whole roach hive off their skin? They almost never do that. The Blattodeons are not very skilled fighters. They rely on luring enemies down to where they can gang up in great numbers to destroy them, yes?”

“Right!” Gio's getting excited now. “They've almost never attacked in public the whole time we've been after them. They'll show up now and then, always cleaning up their dead quickly when it's a public melee, but they never launched a full-scale lash out like the one by the river today.”

“I mean,” I say, “we did take out Mom and Pop Fern. That's gotta . . .”

“That's the thing,” Gio says. “That's not how they function. Jeremy doesn't come first; the hive comes first. Always. His needs don't dictate their movements; theirs do his. Look, we
captured one once, Rigo and this guy Ishmael we were working with. We did everything we could to get that corpselike motherfucker to talk.”

“And?” I say.

Rigo shakes his head. “The Blattodeon Trinity. That's all we got out of him. The Blattodeon Trinity, the Master Hive. He croaked and whistled and hummed for hours, but the only actual words he said were those.”

“It's like they're hardwired to protect it,” Gio says. “But that's all we got. The Blattodeon Trinity, the Master Hive. Everything for them revolves around that. So if they're breaching their normal protocol now, it's for that. That's been put into play somehow. And they're protecting it is my guess.”

I growl. The weight of incomplete information hangs over all of us.

“But it's still not adding up,” Gio says. “Why would they grab up the kids? What do they have to offer Gregorio that would get him to take out four Survivors?”

Kia hops out of the Partymobile and walks around to where Carlos paces.

“Not this second, Kia. I gotta . . .” He doesn't even look at her. “There's something missing . . .”

“Carlos, man, stop for a sec. We all tryna figure this out together; you over here wildin'.”

He stops. Closes his eyes and then opens them again. “You,” he says.

“Huh?”

“After I left the library, you stayed and talked to Dr. Tennessee more, right?”

“Yeah. We got high. She's the shit. Why?”

“You kept looking up info on the architect though, right?”

“Of course. You asked me to, didn't you?”

“And?”

“He worked on the Ferns' house, the one in Bushwick that
you found him at and another behind it, a few others around Queens and one way out in Long Island.”

“Tunnels?”

“The houses in Bushwick and Queens had tunnels linking up with the sewer systems. That's how they move back and forth between 'em, I guess. The Long Island one's a tower or something. Got a network of tunnels underneath, but it's like way out there. They don't connect to anything that I could tell.”

“That's where they are. That's it.” He starts pacing again.

“Carlos?”

“There's something else. We're missing something.”

Sasha's by his side in seconds. “Carlos, why do you think they're out there?”

“I—I'm sorry,” Carlos says. “I know I'm being weird. I'm . . . thinking . . .”

“We don't have time,” Sasha says quietly.

“Time!” Carlos yells. “What time is it?”

“Ten twenty,” I say, walking up next to Sasha. “Why?”

Carlos stops pacing again. The headlights throw a tall Carlos shadow back toward the woods. “I forgot to tell you about Caitlin.”

I scowl. “Caitlin Fern?”

“The Council asked me to protect her. That's what they were calling me in for this morning. Apparently she's done work for them.”

“Figures,” Sasha scoffs. If the Council dis reaches Carlos, he doesn't react.

“And she asked me to help her take out her brother.”

Gio comes around to where we're standing. “That makes no sense.”

“Said Jeremy always blamed their parents for not giving enough to support him, and he'd threatened to kill them before, so she figured he'd finally done it when the house burned down and there were no bodies.”

Carlos and I trade the slightest of glances.

“Anyway, I'm supposed to meet her at eleven in Bushwick. And I presume we'll go handle Jeremy.”

Gio crosses his arms. “And you don't think it's a trap?”

“I do think it's a trap,” Carlos says. “I mean, I think it might be. But I don't know how yet. And the twins might be down there with Jeremy, if the Blattodeons are leagued up with Gregorio.”

“I'm guessing they're at the Long Island safe house,” I say. “Or headed there. But we don't know the address.”

“We can call Dr. Tennessee,” Carlos says. “See if she'll rustle up the maps for us.”

Sasha steps forward, puts a hand on Carlos's shoulder. She looks like she's pulled herself together in the past few minutes. Her eyes have narrowed from terrified to determined. She's ready to make moves. “Carlos. You might be walking right into an ambush. You don't know a damn thing about these roach men.”

“Hell, I barely know a damn thing about them,” Gio says. “And I been trailing them for years.”

“I know,” Carlos says. He looks Sasha right in the eyes, and for a second I see it all: everything between them, how gigantic it's become and how little time they've even gotten to spend together. They look like they're alone in a whirlpool, like the rest of us are just spinning smudges. “I don't like it either, but . . . the Blattodeon Trinity, Gio said . . . Maybe . . .” He snaps his head at Kia. “Mama Esther . . . She'll know . . . maybe.”

I roll my eyes. “We need full sentences, man.”

Carlos squints a half smile. “I have a plan.”

Kia

A
lright, listen,” Carlos says, twisting his body so he can see us from the passenger seat of the Partymobile. “Kia, whatever Mama Esther's got, you get it. There's something,
something
, and if anyone knows it, she will. Reza's dropping me off a few blocks from my meet-up point with Caitlin. When you get what you need, you tell Gio, and they'll put him at the entrance to the tunnels. Riley and Squad 9'll be there and they'll go in after me with Gio and Rigo and one of Reza's guys. Got it?”

“Who is this Esquad 9?” Rigo asks.

“They can't see ghosts, C.” I try not to roll my eyes—Carlos is going through a hard time. “I gotta go wi—”

“No,” Carlos almost shouts. He breathes deep, tries again. “No. You can't put yourself in any more danger. Tell Gio and get somewhere safe. Understand?”

I nod my head yes, but there is absolutely no way in hell that's how it's gonna go down. But okay, Carlos. Whatever makes you happy.

“Reza and Sasha, y'all gonna head to the Long Island safe house after you drop me off. Dr. Tennessee is opening up the research library right now. She's gonna call Reza's phone once she has the location sorted out.”

“And then?” I ask.

“And then we . . . take it from there.”

I hate this shit, but there really isn't much else we can do. I know one thing: Gio's not going into those tunnels without me. It's not happening. Roaches and baby assassin ghosts be damned. I'm not losing him again. I put a hand on Carlos's shoulder that I hope is reassuring, nod at Reza and Sasha, and then hop out the Partymobile. Gio and Rigo follow. Another Crown Vic pulls up behind us. The hazard lights blink on, and three of Reza's people get out—Memo, the insanely tall and muscled bald dude; the sly-looking woman they called Bri; and Rohan, who I may have fallen in love with. But maybe that's just cuz he saved all our lives. That and those thick-ass arms, Jesus. Bri and Memo glance up and down Franklin Avenue, looking like those security guards that stand there mean-mugging when an armored truck rolls up for a delivery. They exchange looks with Rohan and then climb into the Partymobile. Reza peels off doing about Mach ten as soon as the doors slam.

Rohan looks at us, and my heart somersaults one time. “Ready to do some research, kids?”

• • •

Rohan, Gio, and Rigo stay downstairs. They say it's to guard the front door in case the roach men or Survivors show up, but I think they're just uncomfortable with all this spooky ghost shit. I don't blame 'em. I'm not that happy about it either, to be honest. But Mama Esther is the coolest ghost I've met in the short time I've been able to see them, and if she has whatever key Carlos thinks she does to helping destroy the roach men, I'll fuck with her.

The old empty brownstone seems to get warmer as I march up the rickety staircase toward the top-floor library. None of the lights are on—I'm sure the power got cut decades ago—but a gentle glow emanates from above. I wonder what it was
like for Carlos in those early days of his new life. He must've learned to walk again on these dusty planks, must've felt that first surge of emptiness at having no memory, no past, in these same corridors.

“Kia!” Mama Esther grins down at me when I walk in. A soft saxophone melody wails from an old radio. Her smile fades. “What's wrong?”

Where to begin . . . “Carlos's kids are in trouble.”

Mama Esther boggles. “Carlos's what now? Wait . . . Never mind. How can I help?”

“The Blattodeon Trinity. Need to know everything about them. But, like . . . quickly.”

Mama Esther squints. “That could take more time than you have. Any additional questions to add along with your initial inquiry, young lady?”

“Yes, but I don't know how to say it.”

“Try.”

Carlos kept saying a piece is missing. Gio said they don't act this way. We need to know what's going on. “Why . . . now? They've changed their pattern. We want to know why.”

Mama Esther nods, whirls around, and it's like a tiny hot tornado has entered the building. Books scatter, replace themselves, turn on their sides. About ten great tomes fly open simultaneously; pages whip past. I hear Mama Esther's voice muttering different languages all around me.

“Cantari . . . eloquis . . . baronti . . . quan quan quan . . . eji . . . eji . . . oko . . . oko . . . cantari . . . septimus . . . l'vailche. . . . siguroy . . .”

The hell kinda incantation . . . ? Downstairs, something thuds loudly against the outer wall. Mama Esther's face whirls back around toward me. “Shto etta?” she demands, in what I can only guess is some Russian-type language. She must still be immersed in whatever she was reading.

“My cousin and his boyfriend and this hit man are downstairs guarding the door.” Words I never thought I'd say.
Strange days, these. “Those guys we're researching are after us, so I'm guessing they're here.”

Mama Esther snorts and turns back to the books. The air heavies up, and her murmuring voice gets louder, drowns out the saxophone ballad and the occasional honks and growls of traffic passing along Franklin Ave.
“Cantari celosis meji bara meji qui pantosa quel'arte befoulo chi barra chi oji chi meji chi sotano bara mi bara si obasi . . .”

Another thud and then yelling from downstairs. My heart screams in my ears. Gio. What if . . . ? Gio. “Can I help, Mama Esther?”

“Thank you, child.” She halts her chant, and I hear more yelling downstairs, the shuttle train rumble past, the sorrowful sax. “This one,” Mama Esther says after a few seconds, “is in English. Ignore that it's kitschy. There's something in there for us. Try page three seventy-eight.”

A slender, faded orange book hovers through the air and lands on a stack in front of me.
“Cantari celosis,”
Mama Esther mutters.
“Bara si bara o bara questiquanticus palacio teneriscow pajoli.”
I flip open the book, trying to ignore the fighting sounds getting louder below us.

Lore of Yesteryear,
the book is called. It's from 1904, all frayed edges and tattered binding. On page 378, woodcut illustrations show an amorphous shadow whisking across the night sky over a moonlit meadow. Two figures gape up at it; one of them seems mangled somehow, his body bent over and twisted all wrong.

The threscle hain,
the caption says. But the facing page is all about crop shortages and some kind of fungus. I flip to the back, holding the place with one hand. According to the index,
threscle hain
shows up eight times, including on 378. They're clustered around 250–255 so I flip there.
Which begins again, for mine uncle has seen this with his own Eyes, he reports to me. 'Tis dark and fluttering, almost not there but Unmissable in the Sky against a moonlit cloud. The
threscle hain can be seen only every seven years, 'tis said. My uncle was never the same since that night; he took to the Drink and could be found Babbling about the Shadow that Flies. Luther was never seen again, but it wasn't only Luther. It was after that night too that the children of Shallow Brook began to Vanish, one by one, until the Town was full of mourning, only the wailing of Mothers and drunken rants of Fathers as Funeral after Funeral Procession took to the sullied streets.

Another thump shakes me from the words. The fighting's louder now, just one floor down.

“The threscle hain,” I say out loud. “A shadow that flies through the night sky every seven years.”

“¡Eso mismo!” Mama Esther yells, startling the shit outta me. “Bring it here.”

I walk down the corridors of stacked books. The air is prickly and thick. Below, there is silence, and I can't decide whether that's good or ominous. I place the old book on top of three much older, much larger ones on a claw-foot wooden table.

“What are we looking at?”

“Seven years,” Mama Esther says. “This is from what is now Belarus. Describes the smlechnya, a kind of rabid locust swarm that destroys acres of crops every seven years.”

“Ooh . . .”

“And here, in Venezuela, reports of a monastery on a hill whose hooded acolytes would emerge to massacre the villagers below, also every seven years.”

“I see the pattern,” I say.

“And your threscle hain.”

“Seven years.”

“And now this.” She reaches down from either side of me and places another book open on the table. “The roach.” A careful ink sketch of one of those hideous pale water bugs takes up the entire page. Half its body has been removed, and
its filthy innards are visible, complete with pointers explaining various parts. The facing page shows the monster viewed from above, just the shell-like wings and awful little antennaed head.

“This is a natural science book from Hungary, the 1790s. Says they're a rare, endangered breed of parasitic land arthropod.”

“Hmph, not endangered enough.” I scowl.

“Parasitic because they rely on a human host to survive. They lay eggs inside the stomach, lungs, and esophagus generally. The males leave and burrow in the actual flesh of the host human, become a second layer of skin, basically.”

“Yep, seen that.”

Another bang from downstairs. My heart flails and pitter-patters. Then a yell, but I can't make out whose voice it is.

“The females though,” Mama Esther continues, “are removed while still in the pupa stage and deposited inside a singular host, a living host, creating what's basically a hive in the esophagus and abdomen. This is known as the Master Hive, and the whole operation functions with some kind of groupthink-type insectoid telekinesis, hormones, and whatnot. Yadda yadda. Let me see . . . Ah! Here we go: an unusual, spectral kind of cult has emerged around the creatures, the Blattodeons. The singular living host with the Master Hive inside is known as the High Priest. The Blattodeon acolytes, their skin made up of the male roaches, lie in wait, tending to their own foul affairs. That is, except for a bloody series of months, every seven years. Then the entire cult flurries into a kind of homicidal rampage.”

Three illuminated figures appear in the dusty air above me. The one in the middle is hunched over with long, creepy arms and fingers.

“The cult revolves around three central roles: the Petari Vox, the Petari Gi.” The two upright figures on either side light up. Mama Esther is providing audiovisual enhancement,
and I love her for it. They wear long robes and complicated hats with lowered face guards. Miasmas of power swirl around their raised arms. “The Petaris act as kind of consiglieri, or a support team, using necromancy and manipulation to protect and preserve the High Priest, and ultimately, the Master Hive.”

The long-armed figure lights up. “Jeremy fucking Fern,” I whisper.

“The High Priest cultivates the Master Hive within his or her body for a period of seven years, at which point the entire hive must transfer to a new High Priest, which can only happen if the original High Priest expires.”

“Ugh.”

“They can only survive outside of a host for a few hours, so in olden days, the transference of hosts became a sacred sacrificial ritual. In modern times . . . Hold on . . . In modern times, this would be accomplished by a complicated series of conspiracies ending in the murder of both Petaris and the High Priest and the abduction of whoever was deigned the new host body for the Master Hive. The Petari Vox and Petari Gi transfer their spirits into new human bodies in an act of phantasmagoric mimicry that shadows the Master Hive's transferal to a new host.”

The figures vanish, and Mama Esther's furrowed face appears above me. “Ah, this is important. The Blattodeons do not believe in suicide. According to their cosmology, self-destruction is a cardinal sin—part of the whole roaches-can-survive-anything theme, I suppose. These three figures, the Blattodeon Trinity, are like ancestral archetypes, still surviving in spirit form. That's why the septennial ritual becomes such a bloodbath and must end with their murder.”

“Caitlin Fern,” I say. “That's why she . . . asked Carlos to . . . She must be one of the Petaris. It's not an ambush. It's worse . . . But who's the other? And who's the new host?”

“Says here two of the new hosts tend to be children—one
for the High Priest, one for the Petari Vox's spirit, and preferably related.”

“Caitlin and Jeremy. They were both teenagers that night, seven years ago . . .”

“While for the Petari Gi, the Blattodeons seek out a mastermind of some kind that will be able to protect the other two while they develop into their roles.”

“Someone else that they will try to have Carlos kill, so they can send the spirit into . . .” Clarity, partial clarity anyway, comes like a blinding ray of sunlight after a night of partying. “Jesus,” I whisper. “Gregorio made a pact with the Blattodeons and kidnapped Carlos's twins . . . They must've promised him the role of Petari Gi and the . . .”

Mama Esther takes her eyes off the page and gazes down at me. “What?”

“The twins!”

The library door flies open and Gio tumbles through it. He's covered in roaches. Rigo bursts in and starts swatting him with his jacket. Rohan backs in behind them, gun pointed at the door.

“What is this?” Mama Esther booms. “There is no combat allowed in Mama Esther's house!”

A roach man appears in the doorway. Rohan's gun pops with two silenced shots, and the man falls backward even as two more crawl over him and run into the room. Rigo spins into the air with some kind of flying Mortal Kombat tornado kick and smashes one of them. Two more burst in.

“STOP THIS!” Mama Esther's voice is an earthquake between my ears, but of course, they can't hear her. She's suddenly directly over the fray, her wide face tensed, eyes half-moons of fury. She shudders, and the whole room shudders with her; I expect the foundations of the building just moved. Rigo, Gio, and Rohan collapse and roll out of the way. The Blattodeons must sense her presence above them. Who knows what the fuck those walking abominations can
fathom? All four of them look up at the same time. They pause for a half second, then rear backward, I guess about to hurl their collected roach swarms at her.