"I am but a foot soldier. We have no use for names."
From far behind us shone the rheumy glare of a subway car's lights. Kate shot me a worried look. I ignored her.
"You were an angel once — before the Fall. You had a name then, didn't you?"
Another shuffling step, another wince. Behind us, the train pressed ever closer.
"Yes."
"Then tell me, angel, what is your name?" I asked.
The creature swallowed hard. Its eyes closed in pain and concentration, and when it opened them again, I saw that the black flames they contained had dwindled to a flicker. "Veloch," it said.
"Veloch, I need you to listen to me. This girl is an innocent; her soul is unmarred. She's been set up — by who, I don't know. Whoever it is, they clearly want a war. If you take her, a war's exactly what they'll get. You and I both know what we've seen so far is nothing compared to what would happen if the Adversary were to lay claim to a pure soul."
The demon took another limping step forward. "Even if what you say is true, I have my orders. What is it you want from me?" Its voice was hoarse and weak, his words nearly lost to the rumble of the coming train.
"I want you to trust me," I said. "I want you to trust me because I need your help."
The creature snorted. "You want me to trust you? Why would I, when your kind, unlike mine, is not bound by your word?" It took another step forward. It stood only paces away now, wrapped in a shroud of guttering darkness that did little to repel the lights of the approaching train. Kate stood panicked and sweating beside me, looking continually from the demon to the train and back again. She clearly realized, as I did, there was no way we could beat the train to the station, no matter how fast we ran, and the thought seemed to imbue her with a kind of twitchy desperation that radiated off of her just as surely as the demon radiated darkness. Still, I remained calm. Maybe I'd resigned myself to the fact that we might not get out of this tunnel alive. Maybe I just didn't care. Or maybe I'd just found a little faith.
"I'm not asking you to trust my kind," I said, tucking the gun into my jeans and stepping toward Veloch, arms raised. "I'm asking you to trust me." I grabbed it by the wrist and pressed its hand tight to my breastbone. Behind me, Kate quailed, and a thin cry escaped her lips, while further back, the train inexorably approached.
The creature flexed its hand, and thick claws pierced my chest, but still I didn't flinch. Its borrowed eyes searched my face for any sign of duplicity, its own features twisted with suspicion. And then, suddenly, Veloch released me, the suspicion draining from its face.
"You speak the truth, so far as you believe. I shall help you in your quest."
"Thank you," I said.
"If I find that I have trusted you in error, I assure you, you will pay — and the girl as well."
"Of course."
"Tell me, Collector, what made you so sure that I would choose this path? After all, my fate is sealed — redemption, for me, is forever out of reach."
"Maybe. Maybe not. But it's not too late to try. Besides, if you sealed your fate, you did so by choosing to rebel — by choosing freedom over the bonds of servitude. It was a choice that, by all rights, wasn't yours to make, but you made it nonetheless. I guess I had to hope you'd make another."
"Uh, guys?" Kate said, voice tight with tension. "If we're all on the same side now, could we maybe move this somewhere else?"
"The girl is right — you must go. You and I are wellmet, Collector."
I grabbed Kate by the arm and dragged her toward the station. The lights of the train were nearly upon us. But when Kate saw Veloch standing fast, she stopped.
"Wait," Kate said. "You're not coming?"
"No, child — not today. Perhaps someday we will meet again. I hope for your sake we do not. Now, go!"
At that last, Veloch roared, and Kate was shaken into action. We sprinted toward the station, while behind us, the train hurtled ever closer.
The tunnel shook with the force of the train, now just thirty yards behind us. Veloch's roar only seemed to build, swallowing the noise of the train whole until nothing remained but the demon's cry.
Twenty yards, ten.
I sprinted with all I had, Kate keeping pace by my side. Though I dared not look back, the shadow of Veloch that the subway's lights cast through the tunnel seemed, impossibly, to grow, until only the faintest trickle of illumination slid past.
Far too late, a screech of brakes.
In the moment of impact, I glanced back. Though the force of it shook the tunnel like an earthquake, and the sheer volume of the crash rendered me momentarily deaf, it's what I saw over my shoulder that will stick with me always: Veloch, eyes closed, arms clutched to his chest, a beatific smile gracing his warped and twisted features. The demon was near as tall now as the train itself, which crumpled around Veloch like a hatchback around a maple. For a moment, the demon didn't move, didn't flinch — it just stood stock-still while, impossibly, the train cleaved to either side of it, raining sparks as it ground along the tunnel walls, the metal yielding to Veloch's flesh as if it were stone. Then the life drained out of Veloch's face, and its massive body fell beneath the train, which, now unimpeded, surged forward once more.
The train bore down on us again, this time as a shrieking, flaming mass of twisted metal. The lights of the station loomed large, just a dozen yards ahead of us. But the train was coming fast, and hard as we were sprinting, it was all I could do to keep my feet.
Kate reached the station first, hauling herself up onto the platform and rolling clear of the tunnel entrance. I was not so lucky. Blood streamed from the wound in my leg, and I was growing weaker by the second. The heat of the flames licked at my back, and I knew the train was close. What's worse, even if I reached the station in time, as battered as I was, there was no way I was gonna be able to haul my ass up onto the platform. As the train squealed ever closer, I realized this vessel would be swallowed beneath it just as Veloch's had been.
But then, a hand. It reached down toward the tracks from the platform, just at the entrance of the tunnel. As the heat of the flaming wreck singed my neck and back, eating holes through the flannel of my shirt, I leapt, grabbing Kate's proffered wrist as she clamped down on mine.
And as I swung weightless toward the platform, forty tons of twisted metal bearing down behind me, I closed my eyes and prayed.
29
I tumbled onto the platform, the flaming wreck of the train clipping my ankle as it sailed past and sending me skittering across the tiles. I came to rest in a dingy yellow corner littered with gum and filth and smelling faintly of piss, and as I lay there, taking stock to see if I'd brought all my limbs with me, I thought it might just be the most beautiful place I'd ever seen.
Kate lay on her back just a few feet away, her chest heaving with exertion, her face beet-red and drenched in sweat. As her eyes briefly met mine, though, I saw they were wild with life, as I'm sure mine were as well. What a sight we must've been, although there was no one there to see us; out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the last stragglers from the platform fleeing streetside up the stairs. I guess nobody wanted to stay to watch the train wreck. Thinking back to the station we'd just come from, I suspected the people in this one had no idea how lucky they just were.
"You OK?" Kate asked. I rolled onto my side, watching her as she rested her head against the station floor and lay staring at the ceiling, chest heaving with breath after gasping breath. She looked as exhausted as I felt.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah. But what about Veloch? Is he dead?"
I shook my head, and then realized that, facing the ceiling as she now was, there's no way she could have caught that. "No," I said. "Just his vessel."