“I don’t know,” Sarah said, growing frustrated. Her eyes were still streaming tears. “She’s one of my children,” she shouted. “I will come with you.”

  I felt the immense pressure in my head, and I had to close my eyes to fight it. When I opened them, I was angry. I almost didn’t recognize the feeling.

  “I’m sorry, brother,” Sarah said, reading my anger. “Kelsie.” Her voice trailed off.

  My anger faded at once. “I’ll be back soon,” I said.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around, finding myself face to face with Izak. The vagrant demon had a sword in his other hand.

  “He wants to come with you,” Sarah said. “He wants to be my eyes.”

  I glanced back at Sarah. Another manifestation of the evil part of her nature, or just normal teenage rebellion? I knew she had a connection to the demon, similar to the one shared by fiends and their familiars. Did she Command him, or did he volunteer?

  “Fine,” I said.

  I didn’t care at all if Izak were killed, but I shouldn’t have been so callous towards the demon. Memories of his kindness to Josette circulated through my consciousness. He had been her single source of true companionship in the year that the angel was held captive by her sibling. At first, he had only been her jailor, a silent observer to Gervais’s nightly visits and their painful results. Over time he had becoming something more, a caretaker of sorts, always there to lend a comforting shoulder to cry on, a kind touch, a calm and peaceful presence to help offset the chaotic violence of the archfiend.

  The gentle devotion had transferred from mother to daughter, and Izak had been tireless in his efforts to protect Sarah. He deserved respect for that, and at least a small amount of sympathy. Gervais had cut out the fiend’s tongue in fear that he would one day attempt to usurp him.

  I put my hand on top of his and looked into his eyes. I could feel his desire to help Sarah, but there was something else there too. She had Commanded him. He didn’t want to leave her side, to leave her unguarded. It was hard enough for him when she went topside to live her mortal life. I saw something else there that I wasn’t expecting. Recognition. He saw Josette.

  Sarah and I had never spoken of the events leading up to the change in my appearance. She had known my purpose before I had, and I’d always imagined she knew the outcome. Even so, did she know Josette was her mother? I doubted it. I squeezed Izak’s hand, feeling the bones crunching below the skin.

  “Don’t tell her,” I whispered. “Not now.”

  He didn’t register the pain, but he did give me a quick nod.

  “We’ll be back soon,” I said, letting go of Izak’s hand and heading for the exit.

  “Be safe, brother,” Sarah said. She gave me a weak smile, flicked her eyes at Izak, and returned to comforting Trish.

  My initial plan was to make my way out of the sewers and back up into the city, crossing over to thirty-fourth and seventh at ground level. Izak had a different idea. I had grabbed onto one of the ladders leading to the surface, but he put his hand on my shoulder again and squeezed it. When I looked at him, he pointed up at the manhole cover and put his hands over his eyes, and then motioned down the tunnel.

  “You know another way?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I followed.

  Izak’s route quickly got me lost. The demon led me through a mazelike traversal of twists and turns, through knee-deep wastewater and large brick connection tunnels that were part of the New York underground’s original construction. The sheer size of the system was something residents took for granted every day, except when heavy rains would back up the city’s pumps and cause sewage to spill into the surrounding rivers. I didn’t take it for granted, but I did lament the fact that if whoever had taken Kelsie had brought her down here she would be difficult to find. This was the perfect hiding place for demon or human, a seemingly endless conglomerate of tunnels, tubes, pipes, passageways and doorways, with lots of random egress points to the city above.

  I kept my senses focused around us, not wanting to be surprised by anything we might come across. I knew there were nightstalkers down here. I had already destroyed a group that had gotten too aggressive in their abductions and had been pulling people from the platforms while they waited to board the trains. It seemed Izak knew how to get around them, because the trek was uneventful.

  We stopped at a heavy metal door. Izak looked at me and pointed at it, making a pulling motion. I could feel the vibration of the subway rattling the narrow, pipe filled corridor we were standing in. The demon stepped aside so I could squeeze by him to get to the door. I grabbed the handle and pulled. The door wasn’t going anywhere without some help.

  I focused on the hinges, willing the rust that had stuck the door to accelerate in its aging, pushing it past its corrosive half-life and crumbling it to dust. The rumble was growing, and I could hear the train approaching on the other side of the door. I pulled it open.

  We were greeted with a blast of hot air, and then the echoing pulse of the subway’s horn blasted into the tunnel. I held my arm out to keep Izak from coming through, pressing myself back while the train rocketed past. I stepped out and jumped onto the tracks behind it, watching it roll off into the tunnel ahead. Izak landed beside me and pointed again. We were almost there.

  Penn Station was only a quarter mile further up, and we reached it without incident. I leaped smoothly from the tracks to the raised platform, careful not to be noticed by the people waiting for their rides. Izak pulled himself up beside me. If anyone noticed him, I doubted they cared.

  “Trish said they were up in the concourse,” I said. “I’ll…” I stopped talking and focused. I could See a Divine nearby. Obi. “Wait here,” I said to Izak.

  He shook his head, but the look I gave him in return settled it. I glamoured myself as a businessman and walked briskly to the other end of the platform. Obi was here, and he was in the tunnels. It wasn’t a good sign.

  Once I reached the opposite end, I floated back down onto the tracks and followed my nose through the darkness. I could smell the former Marine now, somewhere in the tunnels ahead. He wasn’t alone.

  “How did you know?” the voice asked. It was deep and masculine.

  “Yeah, Sarge,” agreed another. “It’s not like we’re in a random tunnel in the New York City subway or somethin’.”

  I followed the source of the voices, off the tracks and through another access tunnel, then down a secondary ladder and back into the sewer. Obi and the two patrolmen were just around the corner. Between my Divine Sight and Ulnyx’s sense of smell, I had a good idea of the scene. My heart dropped a little. He was kneeling over a dead body - a child’s body.

  “Just a gut feeling,” Obi said.

  Obi had been my first real ally, and despite our estrangement he was the one person I still had complete faith in. After the events at the Statue, he had decided to fight for mankind by getting back into uniform – this time as a police detective. We had gotten into a big fight about his role as one of mine, his pledge to help me keep the balance, and my need to take both sides. He wanted to help people, do good for them, balance be damned. I had been angry, still reeling from Rebecca and Josette, and had said a lot of things I shouldn’t have.

  We continued to collide on occasion, when he would find his way into my world in pursuit of a vampire or other lesser demon. I had helped him out a couple of times, and he had returned the favor, but it was purely professional. I had dropped my anger a long time ago when the rest of my feelings had faded. This one was going to be professional too.

  “Do me a favor guys,” Obi said. “Head up to the concourse and radio in, get the coroner down here. Also, get Yenys on the line and have her team come work the forensics.”

  “Yes sir,” one of them replied. I ducked into darkness when their flashlight beams turned, then watched them exit out of the tunnel.

  “Landon,” Obi said. “What brings you down here?”

  I stepped out of the shadows and around the corner. My eyes fell right onto the body. It was Kelsie. I felt the anger start to build, and then fade. I looked up at Obi.

  He was a plainclothes detective, so he was wearing a pair of navy slacks and a navy blazer over a simple white button down. His pumped up form was trying to press its way out of the suit, and he looked younger than the last time I had seen him. He turned his flashlight, bathing me in the glow.

  “You knew her?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Kelsie Peterson,” I said. “She lives… used to live with Sarah. She asked me to come and find her.”

  He looked back down at the body. “Well,” he said sadly. “You found her.”

  “This wasn’t my fault,” I said. I knew what he was getting at. “Nobody could have known that I know her.”

  “She’s been drained, man,” he said. He reached down and turned her head so I could see the bite mark. “Vampire.”

  “That doesn’t mean it had to do with me. She’s a vagrant. That makes her a prime target.”

  He shrugged. “Either way, she’s dead. The question is, why would a vampire go after an Awake girl, and how did he grab her without being noticed?”

  He was right. The numbers didn’t add up. “I don’t like the sound of that,” I said. “How did you know she was down here?”

  “Her mother reported her missing,” he replied. “She was taken from the Penn Station concourse and nobody saw anything. Where else would I look?”

  “It’s the same as the others?” I asked. The news reports I had been following wouldn’t have mentioned vampire feeding as the cause of death. According to Obi, mortals couldn’t see the bite marks, and they didn’t seem to think anything was awry with the tremendous loss of blood.

  He got to his feet and walked over. “Yeah, six other girls killed by a vampire. It’s the same em-oh, different location. I’ve been keeping an eye on Freenet. There’s no chatter about this at all. Usually, if a vamp is going around draining kids, they’re selling the blood for a nice profit.”

  “So whoever the killer is, he’s likely just your run of the mill psychotic demon.”

  “Right,” Obi said. “I’ve got no leads, man. Not a single fiber to give me even the smallest clue about the perp.”

  I looked down at Kelsie again. She was too young for this. “I’m on the job,” I said.

  “You should have been on the job two weeks ago,” Obi muttered.

  I didn’t respond to the dig. “I’ll have to go and tell her mother,” I said. “I’ll have her meet you at the morgue. We should work together on this one.”

  Obi thought about it for a minute. “Alright, man,” he agreed. “You carrying a cell these days?”

  I had tried not to, but it did have its uses, even for the Divine. I took it out of my coat pocket. Obi snatched it and began keying in his contact info. I was watching his fingers slide across the keys when I caught my first scent of the demons headed towards us.

  “We’ve got incoming,” I said to Obi.

  He handed me back the phone, and then reached down and drew the gun from his belt. He was probably the only guy on the force who carried a Desert Eagle.

  “I’ve got silver,” he replied.

  I turned and looked down the tunnel towards the smell - nightstalkers, a lot of them. “Eighteen,” I said. “Nightstalkers.”

  Obi groaned. “Eighteen?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of such a large group.”

  I hadn’t either, and I didn’t like it. Nightstalkers hunted in groups, but they also kept their packs small so they could survive without attracting too much attention. Four to six was average. Eight to ten was a larger family. Eighteen was unheard of.

  They sounded like a subway train, headed towards us at a full run. I could see them through the darkness as they entered our tunnel, a mass of pale flesh in ragged, stolen clothes flowing like a corroded river. A booming echo followed, and the lead demon fell forward to be stomped by the group behind it. Three more shots, and three more demons collapsed.

  I took a deep breath and reached for Ulnyx’s power, weaving it into my own and feeling myself go through the change. I growled deeply and dashed forward, my powerful limbs carrying me to the nightstalkers in ten strides. I ripped into them with razor claws, scattering the group at the same time I decapitated the unlucky one who didn’t move away in time. They regrouped quickly, the whole mass of demons leaping on top of me, pulling me down. I could feel their teeth biting into my flesh, and their hands ripping at me. I heard more gunfire and felt a few of the nightstalkers fall away, but the silver wouldn’t hold them long.

  “Stay back,” I shouted to Obi, my voice like gravel in the Great Were’s natural form. My body was being ravaged, but I was so accustomed to the defilement that I hardly felt it. I let the weight of the nightstalkers ground me while I changed back to my human form. I always focused more effectively without the demon’s power muddying the waters.

  I took a deep, calm breath and focused, pressing my hand down on the cold stone floor of the tunnel. It began to vibrate, gently at first, but it became a violent earthquake in no time, shaking the ground below the demons and me. The ride didn’t have much effect on their attack, but that wasn’t why I had created the shockwaves.

  Instead, I focused on the kinetic energy they were producing, pulling it into me, holding it around myself like an invisible singularity. I pulled it tighter and tighter, and as I felt the first hand grab my vulnerable neck, I released it. The energy crashed into the nightstalkers, throwing them away from me, slamming them into the sides of the tunnel or in both directions down the tube.

  I rose to my feet as my body knitted itself back together and then ran towards three that had been thrown down the tunnel. They were stunned, and it made it easy to wrap my arms around their necks and rip off their heads.

  Once that was done, I turned back around to check on Obi. He had pulled a blessed knife from somewhere on his body and was making quick work of the two nightstalkers that had been thrown his way. Divide and conquer, except the ones that had eaten the walls were recovering. I focused on my legs and threw myself forward, covering thirty feet in one powerful leap, landing just short of the former Marine.

  “There’s no point in sticking around to finish them,” I said. “They won’t follow us out of the tunnels.”

  “Back this way,” Obi said. “I have to make sure my guys don’t come back down here.”

  I raced over to where Kelsie’s body was lying and gently scooped it up into my arms. She had been such a pretty little girl. I wasn’t eager to share the news with Trish or Sarah. I looked back at the nightstalkers. They had regrouped, but they weren’t giving chase. They just stood there watching us leave.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said, motioning back towards them with my head. “Why are they giving up?”

  I hadn’t been paying attention. I turned my head back and saw Izak standing right in front of us, his eyes trained on Kelsie, his expression pure rage. He looked up at me, and I could see the fires of his anger dancing in his eyes. I was taken by the threat of his unspoken power, sizzling in the air around him.

  Obi had his gun on the demon in a blink, only to have it ripped away by an unseen force. Izak turned it towards him, cocking the trigger with an invisible hand.

  “Izak,” I shouted. “No.”

  The demon looked at me, and the gun clattered on the stone. Obi bent down and picked it up, keeping his eyes trained on the fiend.

  “Why don’t you ever warn me about the company you keep?” Obi cried.

  I didn’t pay him any mind. I felt a desperate pressure on my soul.

  “Sarah,” I said. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Landon, help me.” She was scared and in pain. A moment later she was gone.

  Chapter 4

  “Sarah,” I shouted. The anger was real. I could feel the heat of it rising from my chest. I could see it echoed in Izak’s expression. “Goddamn it,” I yelled as loud as I could, the epithet echoing off the walls. I focused on the rock above us, pulling at the stone in desperation. I needed to get to the surface, to get back to Sarah. The earth crumbled beneath my will, dropping to the floor in huge clumps.

  “Landon,” Obi said, grabbing me and throwing me to the ground. It broke my focus. “You’re going to kill us all, man. Tell me what the hell is going on and I’ll help you.”

  “Sarah,“ I said again. “Something’s happened. I need to get to her.”

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me up. He led me out of the tunnel, back to the subway platform and up onto the concourse. His patrolmen were there, and he ordered them to keep the civilians out of the tunnel, that a collapse had ruined the crime scene. They looked at me, but all they saw was a homeless man carrying a duffel.

  His car was parked right outside the 34th Street entrance. We jumped in and he hit the gas, his siren blaring a path in the otherwise unforgiving crush of traffic. I directed him through the city streets, the car careening in a controlled wildness as he raced along.

  I jumped out of the car before Obi could slam it to a stop, had the manhole cover thrown aside, and was underground before he got out of the door. I could sense him following behind, but I didn’t care. I had promised to protect Sarah, and now something had happened and I wasn’t there. I focused, powering my legs, propelling myself forward. I left Izak and Obi way behind.

  Eight minutes. That’s how long it had taken me to get from Penn to Sarah’s shanty town. It was eight minutes too late. The tents, tarps, cardboard, and plastic had been shredded and thrown around the cavernous room as though a tornado had somehow managed to form below the surface. Cookware, electronics, clothing; all of the Awake resident’s worldly possessions lay scattered on the cement. The vagrants themselves hadn’t fared much better. The bodies that hadn’t been taken were tossed around like discarded old dolls, fresh blood still pooling around them, leaking from gaping wounds and missing appendages.