"Alek Knight."
Still he knelt on the dead stairs, but now there was no pain. There was nothing. He was a husk, a chrysalis, finished.
"It is near morning," she said from behind.
Her presence closed in on him like a shadow, and the fine hairs of his neck came alive. "Don't, please," he pleaded.
She stopped. "Why are you mourning?"
"Don't act innocent, bitch. It doesn't become you."
It would come now, he knew, a cry of rage that would rattle the skeleton of his sanity apart, a flash of anger like an open-mouthed furnace at his back. He tensed, expected, even anticipated it, yet all he heard was the purity of the unbroken silence around him.
"I am not Debra, Alek Knight," she whispered with her perfect sense, "you are. And you would do yourself a service to remember that."
He pulled his fingers through his tangled hair. "I hate you sometimes."
She laughed at him. "What a strange creature, priest, to believe that all things are trapped within the perimeters of conception and death."
She hesitated. She was being wise and playful with him again, making him the fool with her philosophies. Eventually she tired of the game, however, and she sighed. "He's with Davey now."
Alek shook his head. "Jesus, I can't think like you."
"You don't have to." And all at once the mocking wisdom was gone and her voice only seemed frail and so very human. "I don't want you to," she whispered. "Spare a little hate for me."
"That's an awful request."
"It is what the man in you feels and I think it is that that I love best in you."
"You love that I'm weak?"
"That you are strong enough to be weak, to change. You are so evolved, so better equipped for this world than I."
He smeared the mask of tears on his face. "God help me, I wish there was a way out of this. I want to be dead or finished with this."
A muffled, echoing laugh: "That can be arranged, pardner."
Alek turned at the sound of Kansas's savage Midwestern drawl and glanced around the tunnels, up the curving spine of the elevator, down the branching corridors. Fuck. There he was. There they were. A pair of faceless silhouettes standing against the wall about twenty yards behind them, anonymous as shadows.
"Where are they?" Teresa asked, spinning on her heels.
As if on cue, they peeled away from the wall and started to stalk casually toward the two of them. Because of the partial shadow thrown by the doorway of an unobtrusive service elevator he still could not make out their features, but their longcoated forms conveyed an archetypal air of doom: undertakers, Nazis, vultures. Slayers. His paralysis broke, and Alek got to his feet and frantically scanned the sub tunnels for an alcove or an exit sign, any means of escape, anything at all. Nothing.
He retreated a step, but there was nothing so spare as even a shadow to hide in. The fucking lights overhead shone down on them both like spotlights.
"I don't see anything," Teresa admitted, though the two shadows were as plain as day to him. "Are you sure?"
He swallowed. He understood the game now. They planned on staying on the periphery of everything, making the kill quick, like a pair of African lions on the prowl. They weren't safe, not even in public. Not anywhere. Not anymore. Metal shimmered blue. This was it.
"Madre," Teresa whispered under her breath. And now she too saw them. Now. Because they chose that she should. "I can see them, but only from the tail of my eye."
"Takara." He let out his breath in frustration. The terminal was down the tunnel the two slayers were emerging from. For them it was up the elevator and onto the thoroughfare overhead or nothing. He drew his sword and made a sweeping underhanded arc over his head. Buzz and spit. The long fluorescent light clapped dark and filled the tunnel with the stink of ozone. Alek grabbed Teresa's arm and dragged her with him toward the escalator. "Maybe we can shake them now."
They all but flew down the dark, empty passageways, their shoes clocking against the floor and walls like the explosion of gunshots in this close place. "Keep your eyes open," he panted. "Tell me if you see them."
"There," Teresa said, spotting them standing near a news kiosk just ahead of them.
They switched directions and headed down the corridor back toward the terminal. He spotted them in the entrance of a closed gift shop. They doubled back and saw them yet again, lurking in the shadows around the pay phones. They seemed to be everywhere at once, anticipating their every move. Am I paranoid? Alek wondered. Am I imagining all of this?
"Stop."
Teresa glanced up. "What?"
"Just stop!" he shouted, pulling her up short. "Do you see them?"
She glanced around. "No."
He looked back, gasping for breath. "Takara," he said again. "She's an illusionist. They're not everywhere. They're just trying to get us alone into one of the branch corridors."
Teresa looked on him with perfect understanding. Then she turned like a soldier and headed back toward the terminal. Alek followed. He didn't know how much she understood about their methods, but obviously it was enough for her to want to turn their own technique on them. Minutes later they were standing at the gate again, waiting for the train to dock and open its door to them. For some reason the arrival was behind schedule; the train wasn't there some five minutes later when the electronic board announced the line.
He was feeling hunted again, but he knew he had to ride it out. There was no turning back. Here, crushed in with the take-ons, was the only place they were safe. He glanced around, looking for the coats. "Fuck. There they are."
Teresa discreetly withdrew the sharp, ornate knife from the top of her Doc, a knife that gleamed black with a band of rusted pit-marks under the hilt. Iron.
"It's no use," he whispered. "They'll follow us onto the train and do us there."
"With all these witnesses...?"
He caught the gleam of predatory anticipation in two pairs of emerging eyes. "Doesn't matter. Everyone's expendable now."
He didn't know what was going on in the minds of the two slayers, but he was certain if he forced their hand all hell would break lose. In the worse case scenario, they would break the Covenant Laws, disrupt the mortals' world, kill Teresa and forcibly abduct him right here in spite of the crowd. At best, they might all die together locked in mortal combat. Either way, this was the end of the road.
He waited for Kansas to go for his gun, and sure enough he pulled his hand out from under his duster and stretched it out, the modified Glock shining like a small cannon as he pointed it accusingly at Alek.
Alek pointed. "Gunman! Down!"
True to form, the people standing on the platform, most of them New Yorkers born and bred with the fastest reflexes in the entire country, went down with a communal shout as iron slingshots sprayed the empty space where their heads had been only seconds before. The ammo tore the opposite side of the sub tunnel to roaring tatters. An innocent went down, a few were lifted by the barrage of Kansas's high-impact bullets and forcefully shoved over the edge of the platform and into the track to die slowly, in agony. Those few unfortunates changed everything. When the gunfire didn't let up, the remaining people on the platform decided to stay. Alek used the cover to drop over the edge of the platform; the fingers of his right hand digging into the concrete apron, his left locked around Teresa's wrist as she hung suspended over the track. He gritted his teeth resolutely and waited until the gunfire stuttered to a halt.
There was a terrible, prolonged, whimpering silence as the people writhed in shock and the slayers regrouped. He heard beneath the constant hum of violence the distant cries of panic, police ban radio, and the slayers' feet shifting on the cement apron, trying to decide if they had the courage to leave or to stay, and completely unsure as to their targets' whereabouts.
Wordless, her face flushing with the work, Teresa suddenly gripped his forearm and began to inch her way up the ladder of his body. He opened his mouth to whisper the word no to her. She kissed him in passing as she clambered to the top of the platform. Alek shook his head vehemently. She ignored him; she gripped his shoulders, jiggled herself for purchase. Then she reached up, up to where a bootheel half hidden by the hem of a long coat protruded over the edge of the platform and snagged Takara's ankle. She inserted her iron knife into it like a child taking a first enthusiastic stab at a Halloween Jack-o'-lantern.
Takara screamed shrilly, her mile-high, hot-tin-roof jump ripping Teresa right off Alek's shoulder. Seconds later the screaming was joined by a brief burst of gunfire that ended abruptly on the resounding subterranean klak-klak-klak of empty chambers. Kansas swore violently and Alek recognized his opportunity. He reached up and found and grabbed ahold of a dusty flapping bit of duster as Kansas leaned over the edge of the plarform in curiosity. Alek let go of the apron and his weight yanked Kansas off balance. His stomach lurched as he and Kansas fell hard to the maintenance walk beside the rail some ten feet below. Kansas's Glock spun and ricocheted off the track and into the dark; Kansas himself let out a low, pained moan, a sound muffled by a charge of screams and combat noises ringing out from the platform as the ladies engaged in battle.
Hard to notice these things, or concentrate on them. Pulsing waves of agony were shooting up and down Alek's left leg from ankle to hip from a bone-grinding knee fracture on the iron rail. It wouldn't heal soon, that. He gasped for breath through all that smothering, mindless pain and rolled away. Get up! He got up, stiffly, and too late. Kansas was on his feet, drawing down on him with a pair of vintage Colt .45s. The bullets ripped into the steel and concrete all around Alek, scorching his hip once in passing, but none finding a home inside of him at least, no Wild Bill Hickok was Kansas. Alek snarled, used his good leg to kick out with all the anger and agony boiling inside of him and knocked Kansas's feel out from under him.
Kansas went down firing all twelve rounds. Klak. More empties. Growling like a beast, Kansas kicked Alek in the face, his spurs ripping a gash in Alek's cheek, kicked him again in the ribs. Alek grabbed his foot the third time around, twisted it violently to one side until the bones snapped and crunched and the foot was thoroughly useless. Kansas roared and threw the empty guns at him. Alek rolled away and came up on his good knee, Sean's sword drawn and at the ready. The cowboy laughed and used the wall to pull himself to his feet. He drew his own sword, obviously of the mind that even with one broken ankle he was still a better swordsman than Alek.
"I reackon you shoulda stopped while you were ahead, pardner." He smiled at his own wild wit. "No pun intended, now." With that mischevious grin still on his pain-riddled face, he used the wall to gingerly inch forward.
The rail rumbled and quaked. Alek tasted the blood in his mouth from the gash on his face. He pulled himself up onto his good side, leaning heavily against the wall for support, and hefted the sword into a perpendicular bar across his throat. He smiled and waited for Kansas to amble toward him across the service walk. The train was riding like a line of lightning to his left; he could feel its heat, smell its electricity.
Kansas swung his sword experimentally. Then he tested his foot, stepping down on it carefully, finding it healed enough already for the job ahead, and started to charge Alek limpingly, his steel sitting on his shoulder like a slugger. He smiled. When the cowboy was less than a couple of yards away and the train a blazing wall of suction at his side, Alek let the sword go, let it stick in the side of the train like a strange Excalibur in its rock. Kansas opened his mouth to scream as he realized what was coming, but it did nothing to stop the train as it carried the sword's edge through his throat and vocal cords and spinal column, leaving his despondent body to wander a moment in confusion before toppling into the line and under the wheels of the train. "Not your pardner," Alek whispered and raised a hand to deflect the upgush of red meat and gore and debris kicked up by the train's passing.
And so much for the wit, Kansas, he thought as he freed his bootknife. The handle was almost too-slick in his bloodied hands. He wiped them on his coat, gripped the curling ivory in a deathgrip. First the knee of the slacks, then the knee itself. He bit down hard on the lapel of his leather coat, bit down so hard his teeth cut through the material like needles as the blade split the blackened skin and a freshet of gangrenous poison smelling for all the world like spoiled meat exited the half-mended knee in a spill of pitchlike blood. His head swam and his vision doubled, and for a tenuous moment he wondered if he would black out. Then it was gone, just like that. The blood ran dark crimson and he felt the first stirrings of serious mending. Better. At least he could stand, if not run. Could stand and fight for Teresa if she so needed him.
"Whelp," came a raspy voice from behind him. "Betrayer!"
Alek maneuvered around so that he was facing Takara on the walk. His heart triphammered at the sight of her standing there, disheveled but very much alive. It was true that right now he was still only on this side of completely crippled by the fall and in no condition whatsoever for any extended sparring match with the Japanese Tsunami, as she was called by her peers, but Takara likewise was injured, he saw after a moment's inspection. The hilt of Teresa's iron knife protruded from her stomach, Takara's bloody hands wrapped tight around it, her eyes fever-bright, her face aflame with the invasion of pain.
He opened his mouth, but what came out over the roar of noise was a weary laugh. "Dying to live, Takara."
"Fuck. You," she enunciated. And with a wicked smile: "I would have brought your little whore's head down here with me to show you, but my hands are busy."
He shuddered as the pain returned a tenfold and seemed to twist inside of him as if it were a knife in his own belly. It made a labor of his breathing. He tasted blood. "Takara," he growled, trying to stand on his bad leg and failing horribly. "Prove yourself a smarter little slayer than Kansas and go away. We both know you never deserved that sword." He knew he could have chosen his words better, even have convinced Takara that he meant to give himself up. He could have. Why should he? Teresa. Dead. Dead by Takara's hands. He wanted that hand. He wanted her head. He wanted her. Alek watched in amusement as rage darkened Takara's face, as the woman's black Asian eyes widened and filled with mindless fury. She shook her head, bloody-black foam spewing from the corners of her mouth.
He turned the last screw. "You're fucking dying, bitch, doesn't that prove it to you?"
Takara screamed, the blood in her mouth like a wet nettle around her words: "Take you with me..."
"Take me then, Takara," Alek whispered. "I can't stop you." And he was probably right; he probably couldn't have stopped her, even in his half-mended condition. He couldn't have stopped her if he had wanted to, which he did not. Hate was an amazing elixir, as potent to vampires as it was to humans. But hate also made one careless, made one lose focus. And as Takara let go of the knife in her gut and drew her still-bloody wakizashi and struck, she left herself completely open for counterattack. Even if Alek had been a warrior of only moderate ability, he could have stopped Takara's charge, a dangerous creature at any other moment than this, when she had lost all control.
A pain like ice in his stomach and groin: and then he was run through with her sword. He bent over it, vomiting with the force of the impact, and Takara came in close to him, using both hands to drive the blade in deeper, to the hilt, in his belly. Alek threw his arms around her and they clutched like lovers, there on the line amidst the carnage and the ozone. Hands on the sides of Takara's head, Alek drew her close and whispered in her ear. "What a victory for you, Takara. Won't the Father be proud?"
She hissed through her clenched, bloody teeth. "For the Father, traitor, for the Coven...!" Her face was slick with pain and effort as she dragged the blade up, widening the wound she'd made. The motion bought the pulsing vein in the side of her throat to the top of her white Keisha skin. She tried to draw back, to survey her work, perhaps to finish him off by beheading, but she found herself stuck in his embrace instead. Her weapon was steel, not iron. It was she who was dying, after all. Alek smiled as the slayer recognized her mistake. What had seemed the weak, dying last gesture of her prey now revealed itself as otherwise. Alek gripped her by the hair and dragged her closer still. She struggled, forgetting her sword, kicking and trying to dredge up one of her illusions. There was no time. There was no strength. The iron in her system was poisoning her blood. The fear in her heart had already poisoned her mind.
"You never deserved that sword," Alek whispered through a mouthful of teeth. "And now you will know why."
And then his savage eyeteeth tore into the flesh of her throat.
The blood of the kill revived him, gave him the much-needed strength to slide himself off Takara's wak, to climb to the top of the walk, and to fall down upon the concrete like a half-drowned man with the good fortune of having been vomited up upon the beach by the ocean. In his fist he clutched the bloody katana Takara had forfeited upon her untimely demise. He grinned at the oddly-fitting end, his teeth stained with the slayer's death, imagining how proud Debra would have been of him.
"And I."
He looked up, past the haze of blood and spent war, and spied Teresa's perfect, mannikinlike face shining down on him, the eyes that looked strangely lighted from within, the mouth so animated it might spill all the secrets of the ages upon him at any given moment. Her clothing was as tattered and bloodied as his own; like his, her hair was wild with disarray. But she was alive, and she smiled cattishly.
She was alive as he was.
His broken heart soared.
"Too proud to admit I had bested her," Teresa whispered.
"Why...didn't you kill her?"
"You needed the nourishment."
And then she touched his hand and her touch seemed to animate him as well, and he rose up, weak but alive, weak but walking, however awfully. And away they ran, leaving the mulling confused humans and the law officials to wander the tunnels and wonder about monsters and war and the underworld and all its coveted secrets.