I try to stand up and my eyes pull themselves closed.
A monster roars. I open my gummed eyes and see a troop of lean, black-topped figures blurring up the street. Old ghosts are coming to haunt me.
The wind whips the sleep from my eyes and the thunder of a dozen Harleys pounds off the buildings lining Fifth Avenue and shatters the predawn quiet. I clutch the leather-jacketed back of the lead rider and look at the Dusters as they gun their bikes downtown. Christ, how do they keep those top hats on their heads?
Terry sent the Dusters for me.
After our bath Evie and me went to bed and didn't wake up till close to two. She ordered us some food from the Odessa Diner and we sat on my bed and ate it. After, I washed my hair again to try and get rid of the smell of Leprosy's blood, but it didn't help much. Blood is a scent that clings. Evie stuck My Darling Clementine in the DVD player to distract me. I sat next to her and stared at the screen, but didn't see anything. I was thinking about the night. How it couldn't come soon enough. How I couldn't wait for the sun to go down so that I could go out on the streets and kill someone. Then the call came, summoning me back to the Cole to meet the husband this time.
When I didn't come back, Evie decided to do something. My coming home covered in Lep's blood was the line for her. After that, she wasn't taking any chances.
She's met Terry a couple times. He's come into her bar looking for me and I introduced him as a player in the neighborhood's community action set. As far as she knows, he's a friend, or as much of a friend as I have. So she called Terry 'cause she didn't know anyone else who might be able to find me. Good girl.
– Bird gave us a ring. Said he wanted us to check something out for him. No biggie, just wanted us to crash Coalition turf and see if we could find you up here.
Christian is yelling over the blast of the bikes' pipes. We're below 24th now, on pretty safe ground, but the Dusters are still riding patrol style: two outriders a block up front, two as a rear guard a block behind, and the rest of the bikes clustered around me and Christian atop his chopped, jet-black 72 Shovelhead. He's hunched over the drag bars and I'm sitting behind him on the buddy seat, leaning against his back so I can hear what he's saying.
– Anyway, I threw together a squad and here we are.
There's more to it, there has to be. The Dusters are one of the small Clans from below Houston. They've managed to carve out some turf around Pike Street under the Manhattan Bridge. They don't have an official affiliation with the Society, but they're allied. The Dusters watch the Society's back door so Terry doesn't get too antsy about them being so close to his turf. But they don't generally go around running Society errands. A deal was cut. The Dusters are either paying off a big debt or getting something big for their trouble; nothing else would make them risk their president and twelve of their best riders by coming onto Coalition territory for a non-member. Whatever price was paid I'll be expected to chip in with something. We cross 14th, back on Society turf, and the bikes start peeling off in twos and threes, each rider saluting Christian with the tip of a top hat before disappearing down a side street. And then it's just Christian and me.
– Bird wants to see you.
I look at the paling sky. If I go to Terry now I'll be stuck with him all day.
– Take me to my place.
– He said to drop you at their headquarters.
– You taking orders from the Society now?
He turns left onto 10th Street. I get off the bike in front of my apartment. Christian sits on the idling machine, takes off his hat and slides his WW I-style goggles up on his forehead.
– Hear you got a problem with some shamblers.
– Where'd you hear that?
– Word gets around.
– Yeah, that's what word does.
– Need any help? That shit's no good for none of us.
– Don't know what you're talking about. Everything's cool with me.
– Yeah.
He slips the goggles down and puts his hat back on.
– Guess that's why Bird's sending us to scoop you off the sidewalk on 55th.
I stick out my hand and he takes it.
– Thanks for the ride.
He keeps hold of my hand.
– I'd say anytime, but I'd be lying. You should drop all the Coalition and Society crap, Joe. You keep playing the ends against the middle, you're gonna get fucked.
I take my hand back and keep my mouth shut.
He shakes his head.
– OK, play it that way. But you don't belong with them, man. You belong with us, down under the bridge. You belong free.
– Nobody's free.
– Just looks that way to you, Joe.
He kicks the bike into gear and blows down the street. I watch him turn the corner onto A, then go inside.
Christian's one of mine. I didn't infect him, best I know I've never infected anyone, but I found him. He and his boys had taken up on that block of Pike not knowing that the Chinatown Wall had claimed it. They rumbled with the Wall. 'Course, they had no idea the Wall were all Vampyre. The Wall savaged his gang, left most drained and walked away from the mess. That's how those animals operated back then. This was 78, 79, and I was still with the Society. I went down there with Terry to clean things up. We pitched the bodies in the East River, but Christian still had some life. Terry figured him finished and was ready to dump him. I figured I owed someone else the same shot Terry had given me.
I took him to a Society safe house and got him through it. He'd seen plenty of weird shit, he'd seen what the Wall did to his friends. That was enough for him to believe. But once he was strong enough to move he split, wanted nothing to do with Terry's peace and love agenda. He tracked down what was left of his old gang and went to work, infecting them. It took him a year to build a new gang and then he went back to Pike Street, and the Dusters wiped out an entire generation of Wall. Only reason those Chinatown bastards are even considered a Clan anymore is because they've been around for so long. Nowadays the Dusters have their turf wired so tight that only the major Clans would think about walking Pike without an invitation.
I need to call Evie and tell her I'm OK. I need to call Terry and tell him I'll talk to him tonight, find out what I owe him for the rescue. I need to get back on the street and find the girl and the carrier. But first I need a drink. I don't know what Horde slipped me, but anything that could put me down that hard would have been lethal to someone uninfected. I still feel weak and sick as shit. So I open my fridge, more than a little concerned about how much I've been drinking, and find out I have more important things to worry about. It's gone. All my blood. Every drop. Gone.
The Enclave is set up in a warehouse on Little West 12th in the Meatpacking District. They don't lay claim to any turf outside their own front door, they don't have to. The Clans and the Rogues observe a no-man's-land that covers the entire West Side from 14th down to Houston. Nobody wants anything to do with them, least of all me. But someone was in my apartment, someone who didn't leave a trace, except for little erasures where his smell should have been. Erasures just like the ones I found in the classroom where I finished the shamblers. So it's time to go talk to Daniel.
I'm out in daylight for the second time in seventy-two hours, back in my burnoose, but I called a car service this time and specified tinted windows. I sit in the middle of the backseat, shifting from side to side as the sun strikes the windows, staying out of any direct rays. The tinting cuts down the long-wave UVs, but the shorts, the ones that really fuck us up, get through. I have the driver drop me at the corner of Little West 12th and Washington and walk down the block, keeping close to the buildings and the line of shade they cast on the sidewalk.
The Enclave warehouse looks like any of the others on this block, except for a total lack of graffiti or any other vandalism. The kids may not know exactly who those guys are in there, but they know they're bad. I climb the steps up to the loading dock and slide the huge steel door open on its tracks. They don't bother locking the door here. No one is stupid enough to fuck with them.