At the end of a walkway, a man stood, leaning on a staff. She couldn’t make out much about him, but by the hunch of his shoulders, he seemed very old.
Talia released her cloaking veils as she approached.
He blinked up at her sudden appearance, but didn’t stop chewing on the gristle of his white-bearded chin. His face was weathered and wrinkled like a brown paper sack. The faded plaid shirt he wore was far too warm for the summer night.
“Hello,” she said.
He chewed.
Talia frowned. “I need to get to the Styx. I was told you could take me.”
The old man chewed his whiskers again. “It’ll cost you.”
Damn it. “I don’t have any money with me, but I will come back tomorrow and pay you whatever you ask. I promise.”
The old man grunted. “I’ll take you to the Styx for a lock of that gold faery hair.”
The man seemed out of myth himself; Talia was not surprised that he could name her origins.
“A lock of hair?”
He nodded and gestured to a boat with an open-air seating area in the back. The interior was dirty, with a crust and smear of brownish red covering the rear seat. Probably blood.
Talia’s stomach rolled with nausea. “Okay.”
The old man pulled a pocketknife out of his pants pocket. He held the wood handle, glossy with age and handling, and flicked open a blade. He reached up and cut a curl from the mass on Talia’s shoulder.
“Done,” he said, sniffing at the curl. “Climb aboard.”
Talia scrambled down into the boat, sat at the edge of the malodorous filth, and held on for dear life.
The old man went to a grimy control panel and started the engine roaring. He angled out of the slip, away from the hum of the city, and into the lurching dark waters of the river.
No going back now.
TWENTY
THE Charon left the glittering banks of the Hudson behind. Talia tensed her body against the deep vibration of its engine and the choppy bounce of its progress on the water. Her nerves already had her stomach roiling. She couldn’t afford the extra encouragement of the boat’s movement. At least the speed of their passage brushed away the onboard smell of decay and whipped her hair in a sweet wind of revitalizing water spray.
They angled into dark waters spotted by the gleam of other boats, small and large. In spite of the considerable haze of the city’s light pollution, the sky above was brilliantly starcrusted, as if heaven had finally brought its attention to the goings-on of Earth.
Faster, faster, Talia urged.
The shoreline fell behind. All hope of safety dimmed as the lights grew smaller. They traveled into an ocean of rippling darkness, as if toward the end of the world. She sought no refuge now, no hiding place from monsters or herself. All that was in her past. Running away was not an option, not when everything that mattered—good and bad—lay in front of her.
And suddenly, hell loomed on the deep.
The Styx was a great upside-down anvil of a war cruiser, its deck blazing with the kind of light that drew misguided moths. The armored vessel hulked under the starlight, a product of industry and war, fitted and braced against nature.
Talia’s heart stuttered at the sight. No doubt the Styx had long seen the Charon’s approach. The demon Death Collector had to know someone was coming—another person ready to trade their humanity for immortality.
The old man brought the boat alongside the great ship with a wrenching scrape and idled near a narrow ladder. He turned, the pallor of his skin sickly yellowed in the ship’s light.
“The Styx.” He cocked his head at the wall of gray steel.
Talia’s nausea peaked as the wind died and the Charon rocked. She clenched her teeth against throwing up and gripped the side of the boat as mute terror blanked her mind.
“You want me to take you back?” The old man didn’t look like he cared much either way.
Talia shook her head slightly, so as not to be sick.
She could do this. Only yesterday her shadows had protected her and Adam during the failed attempt to save Custo’s life. And in shadow, she could manipulate objects with her mind. The combination of abilities would get her to Adam and then get them both to safety. She wasn’t asking for more than that. The destruction of the demon who called himself the Death Collector could wait for another time.
Right now was for Adam.
Her fear transmuted into an electric clarity that ran in a bristling current, just under her skin.
Talia stood, gathering shadow from the night. The cold, veils of darkness hung off her shoulders in billowing layers, at the ready. She pulled them more tightly around her to mask her boarding as she took hold of the ladder.
The rungs were chilly and wet on her hands.
A wraith—a woman with the slender face of an angel—leaned down the ladder to look for the demon’s newest supplicant.
Talia waited, heart pounding. Below, the Charon pulled away, leaving her one choice. Up.
“Must have chickened out,” the wraith called to the others and ducked out of sight.
Talia continued her climb, and near the top she glanced about the deck. To one side, a raised helipad hosted a faster mode of transportation to and from the ship. Handy. Wraiths clustered nearby. Ten, twelve, their attention directed on a pair that were sparring. The cracking blows they landed each other would have killed any normal person.
With this distraction, Talia crawled on deck.
Across a flat gray expanse was a narrow doorway, rectangular with rounded edges, leading to the interior of a bulky metal structure.
She forced herself to breathe more slowly, her heart to ease its frantic pace. Freaking out would help no one. She’d start with inside rooms and work through the ship. Check every corner, carefully and methodically.
Buried in shadows, Talia kept to the edge of the deck as she moved toward the door. She insinuated herself along the natural shades of dark and light that fell in the sharp lines of the ship’s construction.
She glanced at the Charon, now a spark in the distance.
A deep-toned click and snap on deck brought Talia’s head back around.
The door was open, a figure just emerging.
A single glimpse of dense blackness, and time ground to a halt. The Earth stopped spinning on its axis. The ocean stilled and the stars winked out.
All of Talia’s senses were overridden by a roar of static in her ears.
The thing that crossed the threshold was Wrong. He might call himself the Death Collector, might style himself as a giver of immortal youth, but Talia’s mind and soul rang with the more apt term, demon.
Had it not been for her grip on the side of the ship, Talia would have fallen to the deck in revulsion.
The demon was a snaking horror of black absence fitted in a sinuous twist around the body of a man. His human host. Deep in shadow, Talia could see the slick offal of the demon penetrating the host to his core. Whoever the man might’ve been was gone, his identity destroyed. Now his body, used and broken, shared his life with a terrible intelligence in writhing misery. Expression vacant, jaw slack, the man moved as if in a long nightmare, looking only for an end. Whatever end that might be was clearly beyond his caring.
The thought that Adam faced that horror stripped Talia of all hope that he might still be alive. The wraith soul-suckers were bothersome insects compared to the genocidal seethe of the demon. The only being powerful enough to destroy that thing, that condensation of defiling chaos, was Shadowman. Shadowman could be demon enough himself if need be. He and he alone could cut the demon out of the world.