The Shambling Guide to New York City (33 page)

“What’s wrong?” asked Morgen.

Zoë watched Godfrey and his horrid wife walk away, and took another deep breath.

“They’re here,” she said.

“How are we going to stop them? What’s your grand plan?” Zoë asked. Ben answered her by walking to the center of the concourse and dropping his duffel bag by his feet. He unzipped it and held his hand over it like a puppeteer holding a marionette whose strings have just been cut.

Lucy, her back ramrod-straight, five eight without heels, hair sleek and brown, stopped, then turned around. She stared at Ben, who suddenly seemed to be a small milquetoast of a man with glasses, drab brown hair and a
bow tie
, for God’s sake. Recognition and loathing were scrawled on her face, and Zoë felt the desire to hide behind Phil. She stood off to the side, but Lucy didn’t acknowledge her.

Next to her was Godfrey, trim and as sleek as she was, sharing in the aura of money and power around them. But he always seemed a bit diminished next to her. He looked at her, frowning, then at Ben.

“What’s wrong? Who is that, Lucy?” Godfrey asked.

“Stay out of this,” she said, and then her manner melted and
she got the syrupy sweetness that frightened Zoë more than her wrath. “Benjamin,” she said, “it’s so good to see you. It’s been a long time. What was it, Louisiana, 1996?”

“Something like that,” Ben said. “Why are you here, Lucy?”

“I’m here with my husband on business.” She smiled, showing all of her teeth. “Are you on your way out of town, or arriving?”

He ignored the question and kept waving his hand at the duffel. “Business. I figured. You do know you’re not welcome here, right?”

Godfrey looked completely lost, but showed relief at finally having something he understood: an insult to respond to. “Now wait a minute. We were invited. Who is this prick, Lucy? Do you know him from college or something?”

“Something,” said Ben, and grinned. “He doesn’t know, does he, Lucy?”

“He’s not that bright,” she said, as if Godfrey weren’t there.

“What the hell does that mean?” Godfrey asked, stepping away from her, the hurt plain on his face.

“Just turn around and go back to Raleigh,” Benjamin said. “Whatever you have planned here can’t happen.”

She laughed. “You’re going to stop me with your little Jew men made of Hebrew mud?”

“Lucy!” Godfrey said, clearly shocked that his wife could say something bigoted.

“If I have to,” he said.

Zoë glanced around. A couple of people were glancing sidelong at them in a clear “frightened but don’t want to get involved” manner. A desk clerk stared at them as she talked rapidly into a phone.

Airports are different
, she reminded herself.
People are programmed to ignore coterie, but also programmed to spot anything weird in airports.

Godfrey took Lucy’s elbow. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but an airport is not where you want to have an argument. Let’s just get out of here.”

She shook him off. “Stay out of this.”

“Are you leaving this city or not?” Ben asked, his voice high and impatient.

She took a step closer to him. “No. I plan on making this city mine, Benjamin. You can have New Jersey if you turn around right now and don’t mess with me. Tuck your tail between your legs and go if you want to live.”

Ben took a small pad of paper out of his pocket. He scribbled something on the top sheet.

Lucy laughed again. “We’re really going to do this? Here? You’re challenging me?”

He nodded. “I can’t let you out of the airport, Lucy. Turn around, or face my golem.”

“Golem? What the fuck is a golem?” Godfrey asked.

Lucy waited, a small smile on her face, as Benjamin took a water bottle from a pocket of his duffel and upended it into the main pocket. He then dropped a yellow sticky note into the bag. A small cloud of dust puffed out, and despite his confusion, Godfrey leaned forward and looked at a little puddle of mud in the middle of a large collection of dust.

“I’m getting security. That might be a chemical weapon,” he said. “Let’s get out of here, Lucy.”

He took her elbow again and tugged, but she didn’t move. She looked as if she were made of iron: every muscle tensed, sweat broke out on her upper lip, and she kept that same serene smile. He tugged again and she stayed rooted to her spot.

“Luce?” Godfrey asked in a small voice.

Ben said something then in a different language—Hebrew, Zoë guessed—and the mud inside his bag began to move. Tendrils
that quickly formed into digits grasped the zippered opening of the bag, pulling it wide to allow a much larger lump, a head, to rise out. It twisted briefly to birth its shoulders, then rose faster. The piece of paper stuck to its forehead fluttered as it took full form, finally a rough, sexless human shape. Benjamin held his hand out, guiding it, and it stepped out of the bag.

Zoë took a step back into Phil, who watched with what appeared to be distracted interest. Someone screamed behind them. A couple of people had caught sight of the mud man and were backing away.

More screams came from their left; a US Airways representative was running away from the check-in desk, which had begun to shift as if a great hand had grasped it and was working it free like a loose tooth. It shifted to the left, then the right, and then the whole thing moved. It turned on its side, spraying pens and papers and two computer terminals onto the ground. Four chairs uprooted themselves from the floor and slid over to the desk, where they attached themselves—two at the bottom corners, two on the sides. The bottom chairs worked their way under the desk until they supported the mass of it on their eight legs, and then began to lurch forward like a child’s design made with white glue and whatever could be found.

It looked like a bizarre man with chairs for legs and arms. It reached out with the chair legs and wrapped them around a computer monitor on the undamaged desk behind it—the monitor showed one large symbol that looked Hebrew—and placed it on its “shoulders,” completing the grotesque golem.

Godfrey had nearly lost his mind. Gibbering, he backed away from his wife. People around him screamed and ran, and a smudge of blue—security uniforms—dashed toward them. Someone slammed into Godfrey and he fell, raising his arms to shield himself from the stampede.

“Hell,” Zoë said, and ran over to him. She elbowed several people out of the way with her good arm and provided a shield so Godfrey could take her hand and get to his feet. She pulled him out of the stampede, running into people as she wrestled him back to the calm corner where Phil stood.

She put her hands on her hips. “I thought your wife was just controlling and demeaning, Godfrey. You didn’t tell me she was a zoëtist.”

He gaped at her. “Zoë?” His eyes fell on Phil, who watched the action with no surprise, but with great interest. “Who’s that guy?”

Perhaps the strongest spell in New York City is the one governing air travel. Before computers, the spell merely forced all airplanes containing coterie to stop at the same terminal in LaGuardia, but after computers, gremlins had to be hired by Public Works to get into the ticketing and air traffic software to track incoming coterie. It usually works, but isn’t 100 percent accurate; it mostly keeps the city in balance.

Public Works, of course, doesn’t trust the job the gremlins did, considering that, well, they’re gremlins, but the software and spell have worked well thus far, so there’s little they can do to investigate. The software is tested frequently.

With the new software, coterie have more options, including the previously closed JFK and Newark airports, but many still use LaGuardia because it’s best equipped to deal with coterie eccentricities.

That said, enjoy LaGuardia when you arrive, and know you’re surrounded by your fellows.

I
n a way it was gratifying, learning that the ultimate evil that threatened New York was also the ultimate evil in her life. It made things feel
tidy
, somehow. It wasn’t gratifying or tidy to have to save Godfrey’s ass, though.

And the airport terminal was anything but tidy.

Godfrey looked confused to see her, and there was even an element of hurt outrage in the way he demanded to know who Phil was.

“Now really isn’t the time to explain,” Zoë said. “We need to get out of the way of the zoëtists.”

“The what?” Godfrey said.

She took a deep breath and pointed to the action. “Just watch.”

While Godfrey made confused noises, Zoë stared, transfixed, at the massive golem, now fully animated, that had reached Benjamin’s mud golem. It reared back with its chair arm and swung at the mud man. Benjamin’s golem leaped aside, surprisingly nimble, and dodged the blow, which crashed into the wall.

The chair stuck in the wall, and the US Airways golem struggled. The mud golem took advantage and attacked. Zoë couldn’t see how mud would beat metal and plastic, but he grew larger and engulfed the other golem, seeping into the fabricated joints and expanding. The golem’s free arm flew off, finally forced away from its body.

“Stupid move,” Morgen said to Phil. “She can just reattach
it. I thought you said this guy is a good zoëtist?” The vampire shrugged.

“Zoë, can you tell me what the hell is going on here?” Godfrey asked, hysteria making his voice rise to near-screeching levels.

“Your wife is a zoëtist, Godfrey. She can make life where there was none. She can raise zombies, create golems out of inanimate objects, stuff like that. She’s here for some sort of big mayhem, and that guy, Benjamin, is also a zoëtist, and is trying to stop her. Incidentally, so are we. And—” She cut herself off as a tall, striking man with glasses caught her eye and she swore as she saw Arthur calmly searching through weapons in his backpack.

And security was getting closer, fighting against the rapids of panicked travelers.

“What are we going to do?” she asked Phil, who watched the battle closely. “We can’t really fight those golems.”

“It’s a golem battle, like a cockfight! It’s awesome,” Morgen said lightly.

“But this is not what she came to do,” Phil said, finally appearing to join Zoë in her concern. “This is minor chaos. We need to find out what she’s really here for. Right now we’re just in her way.”

“My wife is here for a meeting with the NYPD. And who the hell are you?” Godfrey asked.

Phil ignored him.

The US Airways golem had freed its remaining arm from the wall and was beating its own chest, removing mud but not doing much to stop the mud from expanding within it. Its metal-and-plastic body began to crack in places, spewing mud like water from a breaking dam.

Zoë frowned. Benjamin watched the battle from several feet back, clearly concentrating on it, but at nowhere near the level of stress and concentration Lucy exhibited. She was absolutely
still, sweat streaming down her face and making runs through her makeup, and her hands were fashioned into claws that shook very slightly. She looked as if you could hit her with a baseball bat and she wouldn’t even stumble.

“Phil, why is she—” she began, but at that point, the US Airways golem’s hollow plastic chair arm exploded, sending mud and plastic and metal shrapnel in all directions. The screaming began anew as injured people fell, and Zoë saw Arthur go down.

Without thinking about it, she ran out into the throng of people, dodging and pushing to get to Arthur. She dropped to her knees beside him.

A large piece of mud-covered plastic was imbedded in his left shoulder, several inches from his heart, she was glad to notice. His face was screwed up in pain.

“OK, you’ve got a rather large piece of plastic stuck in your shoulder. Are you hurt anywhere else? And what the hell are you doing here?” she asked, running her hands lightly over his arms and legs, trying to detect more injuries.

“Zoë?” he gasped. “I thought you were—”

“Hush. I’m fine, just got eaten for a little while last night. I preferred it when the incubus did it, frankly.”

His pain-filled eyes focused beyond her. “Behind you,” he whispered.

She turned, confused, in time to catch the full force of the golem’s kick with its chair leg. She tumbled backward, landing on her left arm. Something snapped, and pain flared, bright and beautiful.

“Bitch!” screamed Lucy.

I guess she finally noticed me.
Zoë propped herself up on her right elbow from where she had fallen. Arthur’s eyes had closed.

“Arthur!” Zoë’s yell brought him out of his daze. “Dammit, Arthur, wake up!”

The golem was moving more slowly, its insides still filling with the muck. Ben was trying to conjure up another mud golem, but was having trouble collecting the scattered mud.

“Arthur, how do I kill this thing?”

“Get rid of the character on its head! Wipe it off!”

“What?” she said in confusion.

“On its head should be a Hebrew character! You have to get rid of that, that’s where the power is coming from!”

She looked up and saw the character on the monitor head, written in ASCII. It wasn’t really something she could rub off.