Starling (31 page)

Mason shrugged. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m pretty sure he would have mentioned if they’d had bright blue skin. And ours weren’t riding monsters. I just think it was a whole new species of weirdness.”

“Why did he think you were the only one he could talk to about it?” Fennrys asked, and then immediately cursed himself silently as she turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean … what about Heather? Didn’t you tell me they were a couple?”

“Uh. Yeah. ‘Were’ being the operative word there.”

“Oh.”

“And that really wasn’t the point of my story,” Mason said drily.

“I know, I know …” He smiled down at her for a moment, but then something tugged at the edges of his awareness.

Fennrys slowed and looked around at the cityscape, glittering in the darkness, surrounding them on all sides. After a week of wildly changeable weather, the air was eerily still.

“Believe me, Mason,” he said. “If I had the slightest inkling of what’s going on, I’d tell you. I’d tell Calum. Hell, I’d—”

The sounds of baying animals, faint and far off, stopped Fennrys in his tracks, just inside the cavernous Chelsea Market Passage, a section of the park that ran directly through a corner of the building that housed the Chelsea Market and was home to an art installation of hundreds of panes of colored glass meant to echo the changing moods of the Hudson River. The ethereal blue, green, and red light filtering through lent an otherworldly tinge to the night. It somehow harmonized with the dissonant howling that was getting closer.

“What,” Mason whispered, “is
that
?”

“I don’t know,” Fennrys replied. “But whatever it is … it’s hunting.”

“Hunting what?”

Fenn looked down at Mason. “Us.”

“Ask a stupid question,” Mason muttered under her breath.

She felt an increasingly familiar jolt of adrenaline shoot through her system. The fact that she was getting used to that couldn’t be a good thing. In the far distance, coming up from the Gansevoort Street end of the park, they could see dark, loping shapes. Tall, shaggy-furred, long-legged creatures. Mason imagined she could see yellow eyes and slavering jaws, even though they were still too far away for that. But they were coming on quickly.

Fennrys was already shrugging the sword carrier off his shoulder and yanking open the flap closure. He drew Mason’s swept-hilt out and handed it to her with a stern expression on his face. “That,” he said fiercely, “is
only
for just in case.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you will not even think about trying to be a hero. Your job is to do one thing and to do it so well that not even I can catch up to you.”

“And that is?”

“Run.”

As the word left his lips, Mason’s dream came flooding back to her. The one where Fennrys had told her to run … and then had become a monster. Before she’d even made a conscious decision, Mason had turned and was pounding north through the deserted park, following the twisting ribbon of the pathway, shining sleek and silver-gray in the light of the moon. The full moon.

There might have been people—pedestrians or club goers, maybe even a beat cop on the streets below the High Line—but because it was after hours, the park itself was, of course, utterly devoid of any living thing except her, Fennrys, and … whatever was chasing them. Mason didn’t dare take even a moment to find a railing to look over to yell for help. And even if she could have, she didn’t want to involve any innocent bystanders. She just had to run and hope that Fenn could deal with whatever it was. And if he couldn’t … the sword in her hand flashed like molten silver in her peripheral vision as she ran.

Mason didn’t look back—not even when she heard the terrible snarls and roars and skreeling yelps of pain—and she made it to the Eighteenth Street stairway in record time. She was eternally grateful that she was wearing sneakers and jeans this time. After the first fencing “lesson” with Fennrys in his apartment, Mason had foregone girly allure and opted instead for practical. It served her well in this particular instance. At Eighteenth, there was a metal grid causeway jutting out at a right angle to the park superstructure that led to a staircase, which, in turn, led to the ground. Of course, because it was after hours, the grated door at the bottom of the stairwell would be locked up tight. Mason didn’t bother to try it or see if there was some way to open it from the inside. Instead, once she got to the elevated landing before the last stair flight, she threw her leg over the railing … and jumped.

She hit the pavement hard and tucked into a shoulder roll, trying not to decapitate herself with her own sword. Above her and to the south, she could hear the sounds of furious fighting. Half of her ached to go back and help Fennrys. The other half was consumed with the urgent need to run. Just as he’d told her. But now that she was out of the park, Mason had nowhere to go. Fenn’s warehouse was right there, but Mason knew that it was guarded. Unless he himself had disabled the wards—that’s what he’d called them—then there was no way for her to get into the building. She could try to hail a cab, but the streets were surprisingly deserted, and she wasn’t sure what kind of cabbie would be inclined to stop for a dirt-stained, wild-eyed, sword-wielding teenage girl anyway.

Besides which, now that she was away and hidden behind the High Line stairs, she didn’t want to leave Fennrys so completely alone. As she thought that, she heard a tremendous racket coming from almost directly above her. The metal stairwell grates shook and rattled violently, and peering up through the mesh and lattice of steel girders, Mason watched the battle royal as if it were staged as a shadow play. The dark shapes moved above her with lethal, muscular grace and unbridled savagery.

Suddenly Mason heard a roar of rage. She couldn’t honestly tell if it came from one of the animals … or from Fennrys. But then a huge dog’s body came slamming down out of the sky like a sack of wet cement, and Mason stifled a scream and covered her face.

Wearily, Fennrys climbed over the stair railing and dropped down onto his haunches beside Mason. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow, and it came away streaked with blood.

“It’s not bad,” he said, waving off her hand as Mason hissed in sympathy and went to lift the strands of blond hair that were stuck to a shallow cut leaking blood in a slow trickle down the side of his face. “Leave it,” he snapped. “It’ll heal.”

Mason pulled her hand back. She looked startled, hurt by the angry tone of his voice, but he couldn’t help it. He was so afraid for her that he was still shaking.

“I told you to run.”

“I did.”

“I didn’t tell you to
stop
running.” He could feel that his lips were still curled back in a snarl. “You should be halfway to Central Park by now, damn it!”

He turned away from Mason and looked up at where the body of another wolfhound lay still, dripping blood through the grate. The minute someone discovered the animals, there would be police and park authorities swarming all over the place asking questions. For some reason, Fennrys had half expected the things to shimmer away into nothingness after he’d killed them—like mirages. Like the draugr.

But they weren’t mirages and they weren’t mythical monsters. They were dogs—just dogs—and they lay there now looking mortal and pathetic in death and he felt sorry for having been the cause of it. Of course he would have felt a whole lot worse if he hadn’t been. Those dogs were capable of tracking and taking down much larger prey in the wild. They could bring down boar and even bears, but they were called wolfhounds because they’d been bred specifically to kill wolves.

Only this time, it seemed, the wolf had won the fight.
This
time.

In the wake of his angry outburst, the silence stretched out between Fennrys and Mason until finally she stood and said, quietly, “Well, I guess I’d better get going, then. Like you said, I should be halfway to Central Park by now.” She turned and started to walk away from him, her spine rigid.

Fennrys watched her go for a minute, something ticking away in his mind. Then he stood and jogged after her, catching up in less than half a block. He grabbed her by the wrist and slowed her down. She turned and he looked down at her. Her eyes were so blue they almost glowed in the moonlight, like a cat’s.

“The next time, just keep running.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Come on. Let’s go.” He took the sword gently from her hand and slipped it back into the case, along with his own.

“Where are we going now?”

“Central Park.”

“Wait. I thought you were just saying that to be mean.”

“I was. But I think the bear might actually be on to something. I think I might actually find some answers there.”

“The
bear
?”

Mason looked up at him like he’d finally lost his marbles. Maybe he had.

“Yeah. His name’s Major. I’ll explain on the way.” Fennrys wiped away the blood on his forehead with the sleeve of his leather jacket and waved at a cab in the distance. “Or maybe I won’t.”

They stood at the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park. They’d been standing there for almost five minutes. Mason had never made it that long without being accosted by pedicab hawkers or bicycle renters or guys selling hats and T-shirts, even at that late hour. But no one bothered Fennrys or—guilt by association—
her
that evening.

“Are we going in?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look like you want to.”

“I don’t.”

“Do you know why you don’t want to?”

“Not exactly. No.”

“Okay …”

“I think something happened to me here. Something bad.”

Mason looked at Fennrys’s profile. The sharp angles and planes of his face were dusted with streetlamp glow, and the pale orange light softened the contours and made him look young—like Cal or any one of her classmates at Gosforth. Mason desperately wanted to know what had happened to him to transform him from that ordinary teenage boy into the extraordinary, daunting, lonely young man at her side. She thought that she might soon find out.

Assuming he ever decides to actually enter the park, that is …

As if some part of him had heard her thoughts, Fenn took a sudden, lurching step forward. His nostrils flared, like he was scenting the air for danger, and his fists were knotted at his sides. But he kept going, into the park proper, veering right and heading north toward midpark. Mason followed along beside him. There was a thin veil of ground mist drifting at intervals across the paths and collecting in the hollows and vales of the park’s rolling contours. In front of them, and to the sides, hidden in the deep black shadows cast by the tall trees at night, Mason thought that she could see lights dancing, like fireflies in the distance. Even though it was way too late in the year for fireflies.

She kept sneaking glances at Fennrys to see what, if anything, was going on with him. Half the time when she looked, his eyes were closed. They passed the carousel, the mall, and the lake. Heading north and east. Fennrys was utterly silent until they were almost at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mason’s feet were starting to ache a little, even though she was wearing her sneakers. Suddenly Fennrys stopped and tilted his head slowly, looking around. His gaze was focused on something Mason couldn’t see.

“Whatever it is,” he said quietly, “it’s close.”

“Whatever
what
is?”

“I don’t know. Not exactly.” He closed his eyes again, and by the orange light of a park lamp, Mason could see his eyes flicking back and forth beneath closed lids. “In my mind,” he murmured, “I can see … lights. Like sparks or flames. It’s like the whole park is laid out in front of me, and there are these pinpoints of light scattered throughout it. I think they’re … people.”

“People?”

“Not exactly. Beings …”

“Is this more … uh … magick?” In her mind, she added the
k
at the end. “Like some kind of mystical GPS or something?”

“I think so. It’s like I can sense all the things in the park that aren’t … human.”

“Shouldn’t we get
out
of the park, in that case?” Mason couldn’t help but think about all of the not-human things she’d encountered lately and how she really didn’t want to run into any more of them just at that moment.

But Fennrys put a hand on her arm, keeping her from bolting. “No,” he said. “No … I don’t think we’re in any danger. Not here. Not tonight.”