– 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.
I step inside and slide the door closed behind me. It's dark, very dark. Nice. I take off my sunglasses.
– Simon.
I turn. I think it's the one who talked to me the other night.
– What did I tell you about that?
He smiles.
– I am sorry, it is just that you are so much more a Simon than a Joe. Which is as it should be.
– Just take me to Daniel, will you.
– Of course.
We cross the open space of the empty warehouse and shapes at the far end begin to resolve. At first it looks like rows and rows of white plaster lawn ornaments, and then they become Enclave. It looks like all of them, a hundred at the outside, the most feared of all the Clans. They sit cross-legged on the floor, motionless and silent, each of them dressed entirely in clothes as white as their pigmentless skin. My guide leads me through them. The ones in the back rows still have a bit of color to them and some flesh on their bones, but they get progressively paler and more emaciated as we move toward the front of the assembly. About halfway there my guide sits down in an empty space at the end of one of the lines. I stop, but he shakes his head and waves me forward.
At the front sits a single form, his back to me, facing the same direction as the others, but alone and separate from them. I stop. He's still for a moment, and then turns his head and looks up at me. He smiles and points at my white burnoose.