Descendant

XXI

In the end, Cal decided to go along—which hardly surprised Fennrys—and twenty minutes later, they left the town car Douglas Muir had appropriated for them from the hospital behind at the tram station. They were also leaving Douglas behind, at his insistence. It was better not to risk putting him in a situation that could prove, under the circumstances, impassable. Fenn wasn’t sure it was the best idea—Cal’s father seemed to have a wealth of knowledge that might have proved something of an asset.

Then again, he thought, Toby seems pretty up-to-the-minute on his ancient curses and the insane cults who use them. . . .

He also recognized the possibility that should they fail, there would be a need for someone outside the city to try to find help from other sources. And if the curse spread outward from the city, Douglas had his boat and could get away. If it came to that.

“I’m worried about him.”

Mason’s voice nudged Fennrys from his grim contemplation. He followed her gaze back to where Cal was saying good-bye and knew it wasn’t Douglas she was talking about. Like Mason, he, too, had his reservations about Calum, and about bringing him along into the city. Fennrys would’ve cheerfully left the kid behind to catch up on old times with his pop if he’d thought there was even half a chance Cal would agree to it. But even with his earlier protestations, it was apparent that Cal wasn’t about to let Mason out of his sight. She turned to see Fennrys frowning and reached up to smooth the crease between his eyebrows. Her fingertips were cool, and he leaned into the caress.

“I’m just worried,” she said. “Nothing more. Fenn . . . remember what I said to you back on North Brother Island? I don’t feel that way about Cal.”

“Mase . . .” He smiled and reached up to cup her face in his hands. “I do remember. And I’m not bothered by what you feel about Cal. I’m not bothered about how you feel about me. It’s okay. And you sure as hell don’t have to worry about how I feel about you. That isn’t going to change. Whatever else happens.”

Truthfully, the only thing Fennrys was worried about was what Cal was feeling in that moment. Fenn knew that Mason had been overjoyed when she’d first seen him alive, and he couldn’t blame her. Her reaction was perfectly normal for anyone who’d just experienced the return of a dear friend she’d thought was dead. But that spontaneous expression of joy had translated very differently for Cal. In that moment, Fennrys had seen something spark back to life in the other boy’s eyes. Something frightening. Covetous. Ruthless.

Mason, Fennrys knew, hadn’t seen it. Not the way he had.

She was still staring up at him, and he knew he’d been silent too long. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness, sapphire blue and brimming with emotion.

“Fennrys,” she said quietly, “I—”

“Shh.”

He pressed a finger gently to her lips and smiled when she kissed it in response. He could tell, by the look in her eyes and by the tone of her voice, exactly what she was about to say to him. He could feel it. And his heart longed to hear her say the words. But instead, he just traced his finger over her lips, memorizing their shape, reveling in their softness, the smooth warmth of her mouth. . . .

“Tell me when this is over,” he said. “I want you to tell me when it’s just you and me. No monsters and no gods . . . No peril. Nothing but us. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered. “No monsters, no gods. Nothing but us. I like the sound of that, Fennrys Wolf.”

So did he.

But for the moment, they were headed straight into the heart of peril.

Following Toby’s lead, they made their way unchallenged into the tram station and onto one of the cable cars. Pretty much everyone else on Roosevelt Island was somewhere indoors, glued to a TV and the news broadcasts, or was already making plans to get farther away from Manhattan. Crouched down on the floor of one of the Roosevelt Island tram cars, they bided their time silently as it swung through the night sky on its way into the city that lay under a spell.

When the tram car was almost over the west bank of the river, Mason pulled herself up onto her knees so that she could peek through the window. Fennrys joined her, and together they looked down onto the Queensboro Bridge, where the cars were jammed almost all the way back to Queens, and police and soldiers in heavy gear with very large guns were swarming between the vehicles. They milled about, only a few yards away from the wispy leading edge of the barrier, looking helpless and frustrated.

Fennrys held his breath as the underside of the tram carriage only just cleared the upper reaches of the fog battlement. Down below, inside the swirling, shimmering whiteness, he caught a glimpse of a handful of shadowy figures moving erratically within—probably some of the National Guard who’d tried to rush through and been caught in the throes of a waking nightmare, trapped inside the Miasma’s outer wall. Over the grinding of the cable car’s gears, the occupants of the tram heard the tortured screams that issued from more than one throat. And then sporadic bursts of gunfire.

The men and women standing around on the Queensboro all hit the deck. Pulling Mason with him, Fennrys ducked back down onto the floor of the tram. A few more moments and they were past the barrier, and the Tramway Plaza station port yawned like a gaping mouth before them.

“We did it,” Mason said, with a whispered sigh of relief. “We’re in.”

Down on the street, Mason almost turned and climbed the stairs back up to the station to take the next cable car back to Roosevelt Island. As she stepped out of the station doors alongside Fennrys, with Cal and Toby close behind, she felt like she’d suddenly been thrust into a horror movie. The clouds overhead were a thick, oppressive ceiling, blotting out the moon and the stars, leaving the streetlights and neon signs to illuminate the weird landscape of a city under a spell. Inside the fog barrier’s enclosure, only a thin haze of mist hung in the streets between the buildings. It sparkled and danced, swirling in eddies, obscuring and then revealing the limp, sprawled shapes of Manhattanites that lay strewn everywhere. “Nightmare” was really the only word that even came close to describing the scene that stretched out in front of them.

Mason was familiar enough with New York to be able to find her way around just about anywhere without a problem. But as she stood at the corner of Second Avenue and East Sixtieth Street, the relative silence and the stillness turned the streets into unfamiliar, forbidding canyons. Suddenly she felt as if she was back in Helheim.

She glanced around at Fennrys and Cal, and Toby and Rafe. None of them spoke. They just turned down Second Avenue and headed south. Before they’d left Roosevelt Island, Douglas had suggested that the first place they look for Daria should be Rockefeller Plaza. That was where she had her offices, and where she’d been known to stage lavish “parties” that Douglas said were actually ceremonies—gatherings of her Eleusinian followers, where they would perform their strange and mysterious rites.

They walked a few blocks before they found an SUV that was idling at the side of the road with the window down and the driver sitting, head back and mouth open, in the driver’s seat. Toby opened the door and eased the man out onto the sidewalk, then got back into the SUV behind the wheel, motioning for the others to pile in.

As they drove, Fennrys and Cal had to jump out a couple of times and clear the way of sleepers who had dropped in their tracks in the middle of intersections. Toby took side streets and alleyways to avoid log jams and more than once drove through a parkette or up onto the sidewalk, but thanks to his creative navigation, they made surprisingly swift progress. Mason saw more than a few cars that had run up on the sidewalk or smashed into bus stop shelters or other cars. Most were just stopped at odd angles in the street, drivers draped over steering wheels or slumped in their seats in dull slumber, like the people on the sidewalks who lay crumpled every few feet, senseless.

Not everyone was completely unconscious. There were those who were still awake, but they were hardly alert. Mason saw one woman dressed in head-to-toe Chanel who had obviously been hit with the stupor while reapplying a bright-red lipstick—only half of her top lip was filled in, and there was a bright streak of color in a line down her chin—but she still wandered, shuffling from shop window to shop window, pausing to gaze vacantly at