Winter (The Manhattan Exiles) (18 page)

“
Why would I want to do that?”

“
We’ve driving to do. You need to stay alert. Coffee’s a stimulant. That’s why we humans love it.”

Aine stared.
“I cannot drive. I’ve never done so.”

He grinned.
“True. And I’m betting you’ve never stabbed a man through the heart, either. A butcher has no more self defense skills than a baby.”

Frowning, she tasted the coffee. Her face was as easy to read as a rap sheet. Disappointment, doubt and resignation caused her mouth to curl and then set.

“You’ll teach me,” she decided. “On the way.”

“
It’s not like the TV, honey. You don’t learn to be a ninja overnight.”

She took another swallow of coffee. Her lips pursed. Her eyes widened, limpid.
“Please?”

He laughed so hard he almost choked. Then he put his empty mug on the counter.

“Not a chance,” he said, and went to wake Winter.

Siobahn had rented him a hybrid. Bran got that the Fay Queen was about as environmentally conscious as they came, but he couldn’t help sighing as he dumped his rucksack into the trunk. As far as he was concerned, a hybrid sedan was hardly more than two steps up from a golf cart.

“
Shotgun!” Winter called.

The kid yanked open the passenger side door and dropped into the seat,
jamming his bag into the foot well, all without spilling a drop of the coffee he’d poured into one of Bran’s favorite travel mugs. Winter slammed the door shut again, then pulled his garish ski cap down over his eyebrows.

Aine slid onto the back bench and stared pensively out the window, arms crossed. To Bran’s mild surprise she’d downed the entire wine goblet of Coke Winter had handed her at breakfast without complaint. He wondered if it was too much carbonation that made her scowl.

“Lovely,” said Bran as he slipped behind the wheel. “Is it going to be a group sulk all the way to Virginia?”

“
I’m napping, not sulking,” returned Winter, eyes closed. “Aine’s busy trying to figure out how to steal your gun. You’re just grumpy because Siobahn doesn’t like fossil fuels.”

“
I don’t want a gun,” Aine argued.

“
That’s not what I’m hearing.”

“
Buckle up,” Bran interrupted before they could escalate. “Just in case this thing has enough juice to make the speed limit.”

“
Unlikely,” muttered Winter.

Bran caught the boy watching Aine in the rear view mirror. Aine seemed fascinated by the seat belt mechanism.

“How does that work, anyway?” Bran asked as they left his apartment building behind.

Grey eyes met his own in the mirror.
“Seriously? You’re a cop. Didn’t cops invent click it or ticket?”

“
Funny.” Bran took a hand off the steering wheel, and tapped his own ear. “The mind reading thing.”

“
I don’t read minds.” The kid managed to slump even deeper into his seat. “If Katherine told you that, she’s exaggerating. As usual.”

Bran buried a flash of irritation. He said,
“I’ve worked for your family a long time, Winter. Don’t think I transferred to D.C. because it was on my bucket list.”

“
Are you waiting for a thank you?”

“
Not exactly.” Bran studied the slow-as-molasses truck rumbling in the lane ahead of them, wondering if he dared try to pass it. “You’ve done your share of my work, the last couple years. Maybe I’m looking for a little trust.”

“
You’re human,” Aine said from the back seat.

“
So?”

“
Do you trust the insects that eat the crumbs of your bread?”

“
Maybe things are different where you come from, honey, but in our world fay and mortals mostly manage to get along.”

Aine didn’t reply. Winter tapped the fingers of one hand on the middle console, saying nothing. Bran closed his fists around the steering wheel and thought of Hawaii in January.

They stopped at a Flying J just outside Alexandria because Winter was hungry again, they were making good time, and Bran wanted to stretch his legs. Unsurprisingly, Siobahn’s hybrid had proved to be cramped and uncomfortable.

Winter drifted into the gas station. Aine followed. After several minutes the girl reappeared, scrubbing her hands on her pants, nose wrinkled.

“
Gas station toilets always stink,” Bran said from where he leaned against the hood of the car. “Better to cross your legs and think of baseball.”

Aine shrugged.

“I’ve seen baseball,” she said. “Once, when I was very young. It has nothing to do with toilets.”

“
It’s a saying. Like: ‘For Queen and Country’.”

Aine’s lips curled, just a little.
“You never really believed I rode bicycles in Arizona.”

“
No,” Bran agreed. “But I’ve been working for Winter’s family a long time. You seem a harmless sort of puzzle, comparatively.”

A semi hauling milk pulled alongside a diesel pump, air brakes sighing. Bran watched out of the corner of his eye as Aine flinched a little at the noise.

“What are they like?” she asked. “Winter’s family.”

Bran uncrossed and recrossed his legs. The semi had a laughing cow painted on its gleaming cylinder. The trucker was a woman. She wore a Stanford sweatshirt, tiny shorts, and snow boots, and had great, tanned legs in between. She flung back long brown hair as she fiddled with the diesel pump.

“How many are there?” Aine stepped between Bran and the woman, recapturing his attention. “Trapped on the York island?”

“
Manhattan. I don’t count them,” Bran replied. “I just do as I’m told and get paid for the privilege.”

“
You must have some idea,” the girl persisted. “Winter said they were more than twelve tens of exiles. But that most have died or disappeared.”

“
Winter’s been talking.” Bran was amused and surprised. Maybe the girl would prove useful, after all. “Usually he’s tight as a clam.”

“
Another foolish human saying.” Aine was small, but when she firmed her chin and set her shoulders Bran remembered that she had grown up in a different, more primitive world. “How did they die? What harms fay here?”

“
Same thing as kills
sluagh
, or humans. Knives, a stray bullet, madness. Fay may be ageless, but in the city they’re hardly immortal. Careful, honey. Winter may have loosened up a bit, but he won’t appreciate too many questions. They’re a paranoid bunch.”

Aine followed the tilt of Bran’s chin. Winter ducked out of the market, an open bag of Doritos in his right hand, a steaming cup of coffee in his left. He slouched as he crossed the blacktop. His cap was pulled low, hiding the gems in his ears. He might have been a normal cynical adolescent, if a guy didn’t look too closely at his feet. Bran wasn’t sure the soles of the kid’s boots actually touched the asphalt.

“What?” Winter demanded when he reached the car.

“
Nothing,” Bran said, bland. “Ready to go?”

“
More than. It reeks in there.” Grey eyes slitted in distaste, the kid slid back into shotgun, and buried his nose in the Doritos bag.

Bran arched a brow at Aine. She almost smiled in reply.

When Bran pulled back onto the freeway, the laughing cow semi twinkled in the hybrid’s rear view mirror.

11
. Tiger

Richard waited.

His thighs ached from crouching. A burn throbbed on his forearm where
Cold Fire had eaten through his sleeve.

He had a flask of holy water in the pocket of his coat, but he wasn’t willing to reach for it until he was absolutely sure the tunnel was empty of
sluagh
.

So he waited, knees in the gravel just inches from the tracks, pistol balanced carefully in both hands.

Richard was good at waiting. He could crouch in position for hours if need be, as time eddied slowly around him. Sometimes it seemed as the universe almost stopped, dammed up by the strength of his purpose and the steadiness of his hand.

He never grew bored, although a small part of his mind always drifted, sorting through puzzles that had nothing to do with what might be lurking around the shadowed curve of the tunnel, or with the scorched bits of wall that had only moments before been four hungry ghouls.

Four was a lot, an awful lot; even if they had been small, lesser monsters. Winter wouldn’t be glad to hear it. Four meant the Wards were failing again, and Richard wasn’t sure Winter could keep patching their defenses.

He’d like to keep that particular worry to himself, if only to protect his friend from guilt, but Winter always knew when he was lying.

A whiff of carnage fluttered around the corner. Richard yanked that wandering piece of his mind back to attention. When the
sluagh
screamed out of the shadows and over the tracks, he was ready.

Three quick shots and the ghoul exploded, showering the tunnel with goop and
dóiteáin domhain
. Richard’s goggles smoked and pitted, but none of the poison touched his eyes.

“
Five,” Richard said. He popped a fresh magazine of iron shot into his pistol and waited.

Five was a record. Six was unlikely. The large luminescent watch on his wrist said he was almost free. As soon as the Metro opened and the trains started running, the
sluagh
would retreat, and then Richard could get some sleep.

Only, he wasn’t particularly tired, even after a night of popping ghouls. He had plenty of business waiting, and not enough time in the day to attend to even a small part of what needed doing.

He usually slept only when Winter pulled him from the workshop and forced him onto a mattress.

But Winter had left the tunnels, left the city, left Richard in charge. And Richard was very worried about the growing cracks in their defenses.

The watch on his wrist showed two minutes until five. Lolo had given Richard the watch, because Lolo felt sorry for anyone who wasn’t good with time. Richard wore it when he was hunting by himself, because it was useful. But he didn’t particularly like it, because it ran on a battery and was mass produced, slapped together without any craftsmanship or imagination at all.

Through the ground he could feel the rumble of trains beginning to wake. He wouldn’t leave his post, not yet, but Richard figured he could holster his pistol, and tend to the burn on his arm. It was a pretty safe bet the
sluagh
were all tucked away on the other side of the rift for the day.

So long as the Metro ran on schedule.

Sometimes, when he lay on his mattress at night, unable to turn off the thoughts in his head and sleep, Richard would smile to himself at the absurdity of life.

In the dark of the tunnel Richard opened his silver flask with his teeth, and poured a good splash of holy water over his sleeve. The poison on the fabric dissolved in a wash of foul smelling mist. Where the water touched his flesh the pain eased.

Gabriel mixed a small amount of the blessed water into the salve she gave Winter for his battle wounds. Winter didn’t have a clue. If he ever found out, he’d probably have to burst into fire or something equally horrendous, but so long as he didn’t know it seemed he was safe.

“
Aífeiseach
. Absurd,” Richard murmured. He took a swig of water for luck before capping the flask and tucking it back into his coat.

Then he stood and pressed his back against the tunnel wall. The glowing numbers on his watch read 5:15:43. At 5:16:10 the Red Line roared past, lifting the hem of Richard’s duster and kicking up the ash of dead
sluagh
.

Richard retrieved his stick from where it lay wedged against a dead rail, and followed. The blaze of the train soon left him behind. Richard preferred the dim glow of the overhead lights.

“
Solas an lae
. Light.” Richard tapped the tunnel wall with the end of his stick as he walked. “More precisely, daylight.”

No one answered back. It didn’t matter. He’d grown used to having others about, it had been years since he’d lived without company, but once he’d roamed the underground on his own and needed no one else.

Cameras in the tunnel walls watched him uselessly. They recorded his image; he wasn’t invisible. But no one looking at the tapes would note his passing. He wasn’t sure how it worked, not exactly. He hadn’t always been so adept at hiding.

Richard liked to know how things worked, he liked to pick them apart and then put them back together, often with slight modifications. But he didn’t care to look too closely at his ‘
knack’. Just like Winter and the holy water, it never failed and that was all that mattered.

Richard used the tip of his stick to tap open the gate in the wall. He secured the ancient padlock with a key from the chain around his neck, then hurried down the stairs, whistling a little to remind himself that he was happy to have some time alone.

The keypad at the bottom of the stairs glowed, backlit. That meant the power hadn’t gone out again, which was some relief. Richard didn’t fancy spending another day restringing cable. He had other, more important tasks to finish.

He shut the bunker doors behind him with a kick of his heel, then stood still for a moment, listening to the silence. Without the mutter of Lolo’s reruns, the incessant click of Gabby’s claws, or the rustle of Winter in the library, Richard’s home seemed very quiet.

“
Ciúnas
,” Richard said. “Silence.”

He left his stick and his coat on the kitchen table. He followed the string of glowing bulbs through rooms divided by curtains. At the back of the bunker, beyond piles of scrap, his workroom waited.

Before Aine’s arrival he’d been building a birthday present for Winter. Bits and pieces of metal and wire waited on the old transom he’d adapted into a work bench. Weighting down a bit of ratty fabric Richard had stolen from the Met was a small Gaelic dictionary. The lesson book once belonged to the Morgan Collection. It had found its way into Richard’s pack when he’d gone to the museum in search of information on Pope.

Richard bypassed his work bench. He stood at the edge of the junk pit. Many of his sorted treasures had been excavated from the pit. It had taken at least three years of constant work to clear the trash pile to the very bottom. About the time Richard finished hauling the last piece of scrap out of the hole and into his home, Winter showed his face in the tunnels for the first time.

Now Richard hopped over the edge of the pit. The gravely slope tilted gently toward the bottom. Air wafting from the vent above was cold and smelled like snow. Either the hot dog vendor hadn’t yet set up shop or he’d moved to a warmer location, because the draft was crisp and clean.

Richard’s boots slipped a little on gravel. Light from the workroom above reflected into the hole, but he didn’t need it. He’d walked the slope many times in the dark, into the pit and out again. He knew every inch of the space. It was his favorite place in the world.

Or it had been, until things turned upside down and
sluagh
scorched the pit from top to bottom with fairy fire. The fire left black char on the walls, and maybe all of the chill in the air didn’t come from the city above.

Sometimes, Richard wished he could hate Winter, because Winter asked a lot of a person and then usually ended up taking even more. If he hated Winter, maybe he’d find the courage to throw the other boy out of the bunker for good, to rewire the keypad and lock out the world, and then forget that
he’d ever known loyalty.

But Richard couldn’t hate Winter, even when the other boy let ghouls taint their home, because Richard had used up all his hate long before he’d ever even heard of fairies or the Dread Host or, for that matter, love.

The bottom of the pit was smooth dirt, and clean. Richard raked the dirt twice a week, sometimes more if he felt like it. It wasn’t just obsession, it was caution. If he raked the dirt clean before he left, he’d know if anyone had come nosing about while he was gone.

The Wards sparkled at his approach. When Richard passed his hand over their faces they brightened further. Every time Winter approached them they shone like the sun.

Each of the three faces - Laughing, Screaming, and Solemn - had been carved into fist-sized chunks of the same amber stone Siobahn had attached to her son’s ears. Richard thought of it as fairy topaz.

He knew the Wards had come between the worlds with Winter’s unlucky family. He supposed there were probably several more scattered about, possibly in Manhattan. Winter’s three lived in the pit wall, at eye level. Winter had scraped out three small alcoves, one for each of the faces, and carefully patted crumbling dirt around their edges.

The exquisitely carved pairs of eyes all looked east.

Whatever power the Wards held was waning. Centuries old, they’d been clear and unmarked when Winter first set them into the pit. But over the last year they’d begun to cloud in spots: a milky fog behind Screaming’s nose, another at Laughing’s temple.

Now a deep crack ran across Solemn’s chin, a new hairline fracture that threatened the carving’s lower lip.

“
Briste
. Broken.” Richard ran a finger along the crack. “You’re crumbling. I’m sorry, I can’t patch you up. I’m no fairy. I’m not even sure Winter could help you this time.”

Solemn stared east, undaunted.

Richard raked away his footprints before he climbed back out of the pit. In his room he shed his worn hunting clothes. He’d have to darn the burn hole in his jacket sleeve. There was another in the leg of his trousers, and a nickel sized blister forming on his calf.

He slathered his burns with Gabby’s ointment, then bound them with gauze. His civilian clothes were in a lump under his mattress. He had to dig through his blankets to find a clean pair of socks.

Richard dressed quickly, topping wrinkled jeans with a battered I Heart New York hoodie. He ducked into Winter’s room long enough to take
The Complete Works of
Alexander Pope
, and to borrow his friend’s second best coat, a biker’s jacket that had once belonged to a street corner musician.

The jacket had multiple hidden pockets in the flannel lining. Winter had traded a Mason jar full of Gathered starlight for it. He tended to fill the hidden pockets with pieces of string and packs of chewing gum.

Richard liked the jacket because it was warm. And because he could usually find interesting things with which to fill the pockets.

He fished a stale Pop Tart from Lolo’s kitchen stash, and retrieved his stick from the table.

Munching the Pop Tart, Richard went up into the morning, locking the bunker carefully behind.

Richard knew the street vendors along Riverside by name. He also knew the names of their husbands and wives, children and pets. He knew where most of them lived, knew their habits and their secrets.

They’d never sold him a single thing, not a falafel or a coffee. Richard always stole what he wanted.

On nice days he’d take his breakfast, or lunch, and sit on the curb, watching and listening as he ate. The vendors were an entertaining bunch, more dramatic than the soap operas Richard watched as a child.

They were also an excellent distraction.

Richard walked Riverside west to east at least once a day. He preferred to make his pilgrimage in the morning after the trains ran, when Winter was sleeping and Lolo at work.

On those occasions Winter had work in the city, Richard took his walk in the evening, using one excuse or another, usually dinner.

He had to be clever and careful, because Winter always paid attention, and Richard couldn’t risk his friend finding 2722 East Riverside, because then Winter would want to fix things.

Richard knew, even if Winter didn’t, that some things just couldn’t be repaired.

Outside the tunnels it was cold and windy. Rain threatened to turn to snow. Richard didn’t allow himself the pleasure of watching the street vendors, because he was afraid the weather would ruin Winter’s second favorite jacket.

He did steal a warm pretzel from the woman who’d lost a daughter in Iraq. He munched on the treat as he walked, enjoying the tang of salt. Above his head trees gave up their yellow leaves to the wind.