The sounds of my hand striking Carrie’s face was loud and sharp, a sharp contrast to the constant murmur of New York beyond the alley and the deathly silence we’d just left behind. She stared at me with tears drawing mascara lines down her cheeks, looking devastated.
Alastair was slumped against the grimy wall of the alley way looking dazed. Death was one thing that the genius would never have an answer for. Ashleigh was drawn and pale, drained. There just seemed less of him than there was before and I could almost swear I could see through him.
Penny was trying not to cry, but she was as shaken as the rest of them, maybe more so. I looked around on impulse to make sure that everyone had made it and of course Eden wasn’t there.
She’d fallen, just like Carrie had seen. Damned Todash Highway gave out underneath us and both she and Ashleigh had fallen through. Twice we pulled them back up, and as quickly as we could. It was dark down there, the color of nothing. I couldn’t see anything and there was nothing to see down there, but all the same I knew it wasn’t empty and that was the worst part. When we hauled them back up I half expected that some black tentacle would reach up and try to pull them back down.
Eden had fallen in again and hadn’t come back up. The loop of rope she’d had around her waist was just empty. Not torn or broken or even frayed, just empty. She was gone, and if she was lucky she was dead.
I looked around New York of 1978, painted with the same grays and blacks as the Lost Highway we’d come from. I’ve been missing color recently, I realized, like it was something that separated me from the real humans around me. They could cry and miss Eden while I was already thinking that we didn’t have long to find this old man. I hated myself right then, though that was nothing new.
When Carrie started babbling about finding Eden I thought she was talking about going back. Maybe lowering someone down on a rope to try to find her as if she’d just fallen down to a ledge just out of sight below the road. So I slapped her.
Everyone looked at me and Carrie fell silent. Yeah, Eden was dead and I was telling Carrie to shut up and smacking her, kicking everyone to get moving. I’m a vampire, what did they all expect?
Yesterday I’d asked Alice out to dinner. Why not? Penny thought she’d been giving me the eye and she wasn’t bad looking. I’d been spending the nights alone for months, since quite some time before Tet got me. She decided to misunderstand me, pretending I was asking for a meeting. I gave her the out and left.
Later that night I took the blood from the ‘fridge and couldn’t drink it. I just didn’t want to me reminded of what I was. I threw it against the wall and it burst. Bright red dripping down the grey wall onto the gray carpet, the only color that still shines to me.
Someone’s gotta be the bad guy and I’m good at the role. I jerked Carrie to her feet and barked at everyone until they got moving. Turned out to be a good thing, too. The street sign at the next intersection was upside-down. The low men were close to finding Haystack.
We caught sight of the low men further up 48th, spread out a little and looking around. I told Penny to hide and I thought she did but she must’ve come after me. She’s a good kid. When the gunfire started, she threw down with the rest of us. I’d gleaned from Lex what bad news a teleport could be and I finally got to see first hand. When they leveled their guns at me, I saw all these pinprick spots of blood appear on his horrible paisley shirt. A mist of blood appeared behind him and he staggered. There were no holes in his shirt…just in him. Penny must’ve teleported tiny bits of him away. When we heard the others yelling and we went for them, Penny jumped ahead. The low man who’d been beating Eden was dead with a pint of his blood mysteriously on the outside of his body. I was proud and worried. She’d seen death before, and had just watched Eden fall, but this she’d done herself. I knew I’d have to watch her closely, the shock might not set in until later.
Eden picked herself up
(turtle hat)
And looked at us with surprise. She lacked the bizarre dialect of Lud, but the voice was the same. There were other differences like the fact that she had more meat on her bones than the sickly woman we’d just lost and the bowler hat was missing, but there was no denying that Carrie had been right, and I’d been wrong. When she said we had to find Eden, this is what she meant.
Haystack was with her, just like Carrie described right down to the way the dirt had settled into the lines on his face like a tribal mask. Except I don’t remember her going into that kind of detail. We didn’t get much time to think about it, we had to go.
Haystack begged us to hurry and took us down to 47th in time to save someone else. I don’t know who he is yet, but Sayre had him up on the roof. Ashleigh caught him by the chains he was bound with as Sayre shoved him off the edge and I almost had Penny take me up there. The motherfucker who made me a vampire (not that he bit me, but it was his doing all the same), was right up there. Carrie begged us to stay, that there were too many of them here. I figured I only had to live long enough to kill Sayre, but that would leave Penny up there alone and tired. Maybe too tired to escape.
We only had minutes to escape and as Ashleigh lowered the beaten man Sayre tried to paint the sidewalk with, Alistair and the other tried to shove a dumpster in front of the revolving doors. The guy touched the ground and it was time to fall back. Men were racing through the lobby towards the doors. The dumpster hadn’t budged far enough to block it.
Yeah, I’m a bad guy, but I’m good at it. I was going to make sure that Penny and the others had time to get out of there with this other Eden and Haystack and this guy that Sayre’d marked for death.
I raised my guns…
