The Shambling Guide to New York City (36 page)

“What part of the park?”

“Far north.”

Zoë gasped as a cool hand slid over her mouth. She hadn’t even noticed Phil was there. “She’s coming closer. Silence.” he whispered, his breath cool against her ear.

She pulled his hand off and glared at him, but stayed silent.

The golem tromped away and Zoë could finally make out the slight, torch-bearing form of Lucy.
A torch? What’s wrong with a flashlight?
she wondered. But then Lucy put the torch to a pile of brush and twigs and set it aflame, then proceeded to the next one. She meticulously began making a small clearing, a tidy circle surrounded by her fires.

A thin, dark hand closed on Zoë’s right arm and drew her gently backward, away from the bonfires. Gwen held Phil’s arm in her other hand. “It’s definitely a ritual of some kind. Benjamin says it’s to provide power for more golems.”

Phil eyed the airplane golem, pacing back and forth. “We’ll have to put that golem out of commission.”

“And be careful with the people inside,” Zoë reminded him.

“That’s not as important as killing the golem,” Phil said.

“Phil, you have five humans working with you. You don’t think we’re just going to let those people die?”

“You realize this makes it more complicated, right?” he asked.

“What, it was going to be easy before?” she asked.

“Of course,” Phil said. “Run in there and kill her. The golem falls apart. Easy.”

Through the trees, Lucy sat on the ground as five bonfires raged around her. She was cross-legged and had dirt smudges on her face. Her eyes were closed.

“Gonna wake up, she’s gonna wake up, I’m telling you, Amsterdam stirring,” droned Granny Good Mae.

“Shut up!” whispered Zoë frantically, and Gwen pulled the other woman away from the clearing.

Benjamin looked at her sharply. “What was that? What was she saying about Amsterdam?”

Gwen returned, having left Granny Good Mae with Morgen. “Granny Good Mae says she can talk to the spirit of the city. She’s been saying it’s going to wake up, that it’s stirring, you know,” Gwen said, watching Lucy through the trees. “Complete madness. If the city were alive, I’d sense how close it was to death.”

Phil shrugged and looked at the meditating Lucy again. “I’m going in. Zoë, stay here. Benjamin, can you send a golem in with me for backup?”

Benjamin had covered his mouth, his eyes wide with terror. He took a step backward. Zoë recognized his shuffling steps as stutters before a full-out panicked run. She put her arm out to stop him and led him away from the group.

She put her head close to his. “You have to keep it together. What’s going on? If you have information, don’t turn tail and run. Give it up.”

With a shaking hand, Ben pointed to the babbling woman. “You said she’s been talking about the city waking up?”

Zoë nodded. “I guess. I’ve never heard her talk about the city before. She usually talks about some sort of imaginary friend she calls ‘she.’ Granny’s got some mental issues, so it’s probably just that.”

He shook his head violently. “No, no, it’s not. She sounds like a citytalker.”

“A what?” Zoë asked.

Ben nodded slowly. “I’ve heard about them, read about them in New Orleans. Never met one, though. They’re rare. Always human. They talk directly to the cities.”

“The city actually does have a literal spirit?” Zoë asked, wonder in her voice.

Benjamin nodded. “And there are some older texts that most zoëtists don’t talk about, but my master had a copy of one. It’s about imprisoning a living spirit within a golem. Giving it a body, but forcing it to do your bidding.”

“And a city has got to be the biggest spirit there is,” Zoë said, comprehension making her dizzy. “All the times she knew things she shouldn’t, all the time Granny Good Mae said ‘she’ told her things. She was talking to the city? And it was talking back?”

Yes.

The ground shook as the plane golem neared them, and Benjamin took the moment to run into the trees. Zoë stumbled forward into Arthur, who tried to hold her up with his one arm.

Phil dashed into the clearing, heading straight for Lucy, who still had her eyes closed. A weeping cherry tree near her uprooted itself with no effort and slapped Phil aside as if he were an annoying mosquito. He went flying into the woods.

“This is very bad,” Zoë said.

Chet hefted his rifle to his shoulder and took aim. Before he could fire, a crevasse opened in front of him and he tumbled into it, shouting. Zoë and Arthur stumbled backward, and Zoë could hear Granny Good Mae shout above the sound of the ground rumbling. And in her own head, Zoë heard a voice.

I am here. I am everywhere.

“She’s awake! Good morning! Good morning!” Granny Good Mae sang.

New York City has a great deal of light pollution from the countless buildings and streetlights. The city that never sleeps is named thus simply because no city could sleep with that much light and noise.

But it was the night the city woke up that the blackout came. Zoë blinked in the dark, but the bonfires still allowed her to see what was happening. Lucy’s golem came together slowly, with trees forming a rough skeleton, but then larger items came flying into the clearing, almost magnetically.

They ducked instinctively as taxis flew over their heads to crash in the clearing, sliding together to form the golem’s legs. A city bus drove through the woods, mowing down trees and bushes, breaking an axle on a rock and continuing to be drawn forward by the will of the powerful woman still meditating.

At first Zoë thought the thing would be the size of the airplane golem, which still patrolled the periphery. Soon it was apparent that the city was too large to be kept within a golem the size of a mere airplane. People in nearby blocks screamed and horns honked as a small condemned building slid toward them, and Zoë’s group scrambled as it lumbered through the woods like a clumsy, legless rhino.

Zoë ran into a thick, feathery body and felt human arms wrapped around her, keeping her up. “Gwen! What’s going on?”

“The city is awake. We were right. Many will die tonight,” she said. Her eyes glowed softly, and Zoë realized she’d never seen the death goddess look so powerful.

“What can we do?” Zoë asked, trying not to shrink back from her friend.

“Killing the city is not advisable,” Phil said, stumbling through the trees toward them.

“Are you all right?” Zoë asked. The vampire’s clothing was ripped and bloody.

He nodded absently and looked around. “Where is the woman? The citytalker. The assassin.”

“I think she’s still with the water sprite, both back there.” Arthur motioned toward the dark woods behind them, where more elements of the city were flying and skittering and dragging themselves to flesh out the golem. Mailboxes and streetlights, cars and buses, a small shed and a trash can.

“Should we check on Chet?” Zoë asked. “A hole opened up.”

Arthur shook his head. “You do it. I have to call in to work and find out about the power grid. Blackouts are prime coterie activity time.”

“Right, I’ll go,” she said. She spied one of Arthur’s swords where he’d dropped it, picked it up, and ran into the darkness.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that running into the darkness, not sure where she was going, carrying a naked sword, with cars, small buildings, and—Jesus, was that a homeless man?—flying toward the rapidly growing golem, might not have been the best idea she’d ever had. She felt as if she were in some sort of wilderness instead of in the heart of the city, wondering what dangerous animal would come through the darkness to try to eat her.

Arthur’s expensive sword became a cane for her, a means of avoiding the trees and rocks in her path, and by poking the ground in front of her, a means of avoiding the crevasse Chet had fallen into.

“Chet! Are you down there? Are you OK?” she called as loudly as she dared. She didn’t know why she was cautious; the chaos around her with screaming people and blaring horns was
enough to cover her. But since Lucy hated her, Zoë didn’t want her sending an entire city after her.

Zoë heard a groan. “Chet! How deep is it? Can you climb up? Can you see me?”

“Dropped my gun,” grumbled the man. “I never drop my gun.”

“Chet, you’ve got to get out of there. There’s a lot of shit going down.” A crash sounded in the woods—too close—and she added, “Actually I think you may be safer down there.”

Something caught her eye and she looked to the clearing. A grotesque head comprised of yellow cabs perched on a torso of a building (that Zoë was pretty sure had once been a small library) rose above the trees, catching the light of the moon. It howled then, myriad car horns, sirens, angry voices, and jackhammers.

The voice of the city. The very angry city.

Trapped.

That’s when the mailbox hit her in the back, knocking her into the hole after Chet.

The red haze subsided, and Zoë came to in complete blackness.

“Shit. Am I blind? What’s going on?” she mumbled.

Hands were on her then, strong hands that helped her sit up. “No. You’re just in a damn dark hole. I thought you were going to help me out?” The voice was strong, concerned and yet mildly amused.

A hole. A broken arm. A guy named Chet. And she worked for a vampire.

“Hell. It’s all real, isn’t it?” she mumbled, rubbing her head. Her hair was matted with blood.

Chet chuckled and helped her to her feet. “The times I’ve said that, either after one of these adventures or after waking up next to a previously hot woman.”

Zoë smiled. “So how are we getting out of this hole?”

“We’re down about eight feet, as far as I can tell. You fell on your head, I’m surprised you didn’t break your neck.”

Zoë sighed, wincing at the pain in her back. “I feel like I broke just about everything else.”

“Can you try to climb out?” he asked. “Maybe standing on my shoulders?”

Zoë rotated her good shoulder, testing the muscles. Everything around it shrieked and she groaned. “No. Sorry, dude. I’m not sure I could with two arms, much less one. I don’t have any strength left.”

They gingerly explored their hole. It was about seven feet wide at its narrowest, twelve at its widest, and made a scar in the ground about twenty feet long.

“How did she do this?” Zoë asked. “It’s like she knew what you were doing.”

“Zoëtists are the hardest coterie to study because they’re humans,” Chet said from her right. “There are also different schools and we’re not sure the extent of their abilities. I can safely say we’ve never experienced anyone this strong. She’s tuned into everything around her.”

“Can she communicate with her golems?”

“Of course she can,” he said. “A zoëtiest can lose control of their golem, but the communication is there until it dies.”

A deep, rhythmic rumbling neared. “That’s the smaller golem,” Zoë said, then laughed suddenly to realize she was calling the plane a “smaller” golem.

Chet grabbed her good arm and pulled her and she followed. “What are you doing?”

“Wait,” he said.

The golem appeared above them, looming. Zoë could see the people inside the plane, still screaming. Emergency lights in all
the vehicles that made up the golem flickered in the night, and Chet hissed a very rude victorious oath as the golem stamped into the hole with its leg made of heavily damaged luggage trucks.

“Let’s go,” Chet said, and Zoë allowed herself to be dragged along to leap into the rising cart as the golem pulled its leg out of the hole.

“How did you know it was going to do that?”

“She wanted to finish off the job,” he said. “This isn’t safe, by the way. She’s going to know we’re still alive, so we need to get out of here as soon as the leg touches back down.”

“Oh sure. It’s not safe. Thanks for letting me know that.” Zoë clutched the opening of the luggage cart as they sailed through the air, and grunted as the foot came down hard.

“Jump and run!” Chet shouted, and Zoë jumped and stumbled immediately. She went down to her knees and lost track of where Chet had run to. But she could see Lucy.

She did some rapid math in her head and realized that the one place the golem wouldn’t attack was where Lucy was. So she ran into the clearing, dodging the airplane golem’s stamping feet.

Water demons and sprites have many choices of lodging and things to do, but they are often limited to parks and rivers. The New York Aquarium is a welcoming place with discreet tanks of fresh and salt water for visiting coterie, as well as exotic meals you can’t find anywhere else.

It’s also the main postal office for any water-based coterie, intercepting messages carried by sea creatures. If family is trying to get a message to you, check the aquarium.

Z
oë wanted to ignore her injures and just tackle the bitch. But sadly, she didn’t have the magical movie power to ignore her aching broken arm or the sharp stabs of pain in her chest where her cracked ribs protested when she panted.