Part 16 (1/2)

”Then not a problem. People!” she yelled. ”Don't step on the corpse when you go in.”

”Right on,” they yelled back.

”Dear, I think you need to let us in. We can't stay in the hall,” she said softly, as if I were five years old.

I widened the door and grabbed my clothes from her hands. ”Come on in. Don't touch anything!” I yelled to the troops. ”Just wait by the door. I have to talk to your fearless leader.”

”You silly,” Mar-Mar said. ”We aren't a hierarchy. We vote on everything.”

”Whatever! Ma, I need to talk with you. Alone,” I whispered.

Mar-Mar and her gang of six came into the loft. They stayed bunched together and glanced around the huge s.p.a.ce. ”Nice place, dude,” one gray-haired pothead with a ponytail said. ”Love the industrial look.”

”It's not mine.” I glared at him. I thought he looked vaguely familiar. I must have met him at one of Mar-Mar's ”dos.” He was eminently forgettable. I pulled my mother off to the side.

”Look, Ma, I can't explain everything right now, but the short version is this. This guy was into witchcraft. He has some really bad stuff, masks and statues, in crates stashed in here. They need to be buried or burned ASAP. Don't keep them. Don't stay around them too long. Don't dump them anywhere. No one should get their hands on them ever again.”

Mar-Mar again was diplomatic and unquestioning. ”I know what to do, dear. Don't worry about it for a minute. I'll figure something out. With witchcraft items, burning is preferable, but an open fire without a permit presents difficulties.” She paused for a moment, thinking. ”Hmm, I have a funeral director friend with access to a crematorium. Well, just don't worry. I understand. We have a truck, and these nice strong boys can take the crates on downstairs. Do you want us to take the body too?”

”No! I'll call nine-one-one tomorrow morning. He died a natural death. I'm just worried about his art collection. And Mar-Mar, I need you to hang onto these. It's very important.” I handed her the brown envelope containing the diamond mine papers and the suitcase containing the diamonds.

She put the envelope into her backpack and took the valise with one hand while she handed me her paper bag with the other. ”I don't think you'll need these now,” she said.

I peeked in. The grocery bag contained the clothes she had picked out for me: an L.L. Bean insulated royal blue turtleneck, a Pendleton wool s.h.i.+rt of red and black plaid, a black velvet peasant skirt, and a pair of old snow boots that I had left at her house a decade ago. I fervently hoped I wouldn't ever need to wear them. Thank G.o.d n.o.body had taken the clothes I left downstairs. ”Thanks, yeah, but I've got my own clothes to put back on.” I handed the bag back to her.

”Where are the crates?” she said.

I pointed toward the back of the loft. ”Just walk between those lathes and the drill press, and you can't miss them,” I told her.

Mar-Mar nodded, pulled her shoulders back, and turned to her helpers. She reminded me of that old Sally Field movie, when Norma Rae gets up on a table in the factory to address the striking workers. ”Okay, people, listen up!” Mar-Mar bellowed. ”We've got a bunch of crates to get into the truck. They contain really bad mojo, so whoever brought the sage smudge pots, be prepared to get them out. Set them up in the back of the truck while we're loading. And people, we're working under security level Red Alert. When you take the crates down to the truck, leave one person to guard everything. I mean it; this is evil s.h.i.+t. Let's get this done as fast as possible. The briefer our contact with these things, the better. We'll plan a sweat lodge cleansing ceremony for tomorrow. Before we start, does anyone feel they shouldn't touch them at all?”

A skinny guy in a Dracula cape, his eyebrows and lower lip pierced, raised his hand. ”I'm dealing with hep C.”

”Right, Norman. You do the guard duty and try to stay at least ten feet from the crates. Everybody else okay?”

They all nodded, and except for Norman, who vanished out the front door, the remaining five followed Mar-Mar to the back of the loft. Mr. Ponytail pa.s.sed me and said, ”Bodacious toga. Are you a disciple of Isis?”

”No, it's a Kabbalah thing.” I said.

”Cool,” he said, and followed Mar-Mar into the gloom. He waved at me as he went, and I noticed part of his index finger was missing. Very briefly I tried to remember someone else I'd seen with the same deformity recently, but it didn't seem very important. Of greater urgency was getting back into my own clothes, so I hurried into the bathroom to change.

I shouldn't have even bothered. I had just reemerged from the bathroom, happily in my jeans again and having applied some fresh lipstick and mascara, when my cell phone rang. The guys had already gotten one load of crates out in the hall, and they were going down the stairs making enough noise to wake the dead, although Bockerie still lay there like a stone. I turned my back to the door and answered the call.

”h.e.l.lo?” I said, my heart starting to speed up. I knew it had to be J.

”Hermes?” he said quickly. ”Ringmaster here. It's a go. Move it.”

”Right,” I said, uncertainty plain in my voice.

There was silence on the other end of the line. I could picture J trying not to lose his temper. When he spoke again, his voice was tight and controlled. ”Hermes? Is there a problem?”

I hemmed and hawed for a second before blurting out the truth: ”Um, well, I'm not exactly sure how to get to New Jersey from here.”

There was something like an exasperated sigh. ”Where are you?”

”Ah, Brooklyn,” I confessed.

Another heavy sigh came through the phone. ”I won't ask why. Look, fly toward the lower tip of Manhattan. You'll see a narrow strip of water between Manhattan and Staten Island; that's the Kill van Kull. Follow it west until it opens into Newark Bay. You'll be going northwest at that point. Call me on the cell and I'll guide you in. Will you remember all that?” He sounded majorly annoyed.

”Yeah, sure,” I said.

”And Hermes, move it!” he barked, and hung up.

s.h.i.+t, I thought, I'd better not screw this up I'd better not screw this up. I had to find the container facility in a hurry, because I didn't have a lot of confidence that my old pal Cormac would get there on time. Maybe I was selling the guy short, but he had been late for everything as long as I've known him-and that's been for more than two hundred years. I wouldn't be surprised if he got lost somewhere over New Jersey. This was a job for Superman, all right. Or should I say Superwoman.

I turned around. My mother was standing there staring at me. I wondered if she could hear what I had been saving to J. ”Ma,” I said. ”I've got a little emergency here. I've got to transform. Can you keep your guys in the hall for a couple of minutes?”

She looked serious as cancer when I told her that, but she didn't ask me one single thing. Mar-Mar's always been there when I needed her, and this wasn't the first time. ”Sure, sweetheart,” she said. ”You go ahead. I'll peek through the door before I let them in to finish.” With that, she went out into the hall and closed the door behind her.

I stripped down again and left my clothes neatly folded on the chair. I hoped Mar-Mar picked them up, or I might as well say good-bye to them for good this time. d.a.m.n, I really loved that motorcycle jacket. Then with a whoosh and a flash of light, I changed into the vampire I am. I slung my purse over my head and made sure I had my cell phone. With that, I hopped up onto the windowsill and leaped out into the sky.

Chapter 15.

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

-John Keats

A sou'easter was blowing in from the Atlantic, making flying difficult and churning up the water beneath me into angry whitecaps and choppy waves. A cold, heavy rainfall slowed my progress. The wind pushed me back and forth. This was not a night for flying, even for a vampire with superhuman powers. My fur kept me dry, but the leather of my purse was ruined. I should have taken a cab.

I was swooping well out over Newark Bay when I managed to get my cell phone out and call J. Rain was streaming into my eyes. I give him credit; he did manage to ”talk me in” to Port Newark. The facility was huge and lit up with sodium vapor lamps, giving the whole place a glow like a low-burning fire. I landed inside the facility by the service road leading from Kellogg Street. There were security cameras everywhere. I a.s.sumed someone was watching me come in.

As I touched down, I could see I was the only vampire there. The original plan was for all three of the Team Darkwing vampires to rendezvous at this entrance to the port after getting the ”go” signal from J. I hoped Cormac would be flying in any minute because I knew Benny wasn't going to make it. J said his men were set up throughout the facility with the main contingent near the exit portal. He gave an ETA for the car full of terrorists of about ten minutes. The rain was coming down in sheets. I lurked in the shadows and tried not to listen to my gut, which was telling me that this was a snafu waiting to happen. Somewhere out there in the rows of thousands of containers was a weapon of horrifying power. If dread was a living thing, it was worming its way up into my throat.

My attention was riveted on the service road. It was raining hard, and the drops striking the pavement made a drumming sound, drowning out anything that could have alerted me to movement around me. I never heard a thing when something big and hard hit me from behind and knocked me over. Before I could scramble back up on my feet, a huge tarp was thrown over me, and I was wrapped up in it so tightly I couldn't move. Then I felt something rigid and metallic being tied around the outside of the tarp. No matter how hard I struggled, I couldn't break free. Whoever thought this operation was airtight and under control was dead wrong. The terrorists coming down from Englewood Cliffs must have had people waiting to meet them-and they sure as h.e.l.l had met me.

Trussed up like a turkey, I felt myself being lifted up by two or three men. They were speaking in Arabic and they sounded scared as s.h.i.+t. They were asking each other what to do with me. They decided to dump me in the water. That was an alternative that held no appeal to me at all, but I was being carried along at a jog. I intensified my efforts to wriggle out of the tarp and was almost free when I felt myself falling a long, long way. I landed with a splash in the cold, oil-drenched waters of Newark Bay.

I sank like a stone. The water was so frigid it took my breath away. I felt as if I had fallen into liquid ice. I went downward, descending into a nightmare. I hit bottom. The tarp was loose enough that I didn't have to break the rigid wrapping, which turned out to be a chain. I was able to wriggle free. The effort left me needing oxygen, and my body was screaming for it. I fought my instincts to take a deep breath. I had to use tremendous willpower to keep from inhaling. I won't go into all the particulars of immortality, but while I can regenerate from injury pretty quickly, I would be out of commission while doing so. Two lungs filled with dirty seawater would knock me out of the ballgame for tonight and possibly for a great many nights.

Kicking free of the last of the tarp, I tumbled along the bottom with the current. Swim up Swim up, I told myself, and surged toward the surface. When I finally broke through into the night, the rain was coming down so hard I could barely breathe even above the water. As I pushed my head up as far as possible, I gulped down air, then flopped about trying to get my bearings. Waves. .h.i.t me in the face as I was swept laterally along the sh.o.r.eline. I realized that I couldn't take off from the water, and my only hope was to get back up on a dock somehow.

But the currents in Newark Bay were strong and treacherous, and they were carrying me away from the spot where I had been thrown in at a pretty good clip. Oil and debris from the dozens of container s.h.i.+ps anch.o.r.ed here made the water smelly and viscous, and it was making me gag and cough. Above me the docks were lit up by the pinkish orange of the sodium vapor lamps. They were high, a good fifteen feet above the surface, and should have had emergency ladders somewhere. After all, if there's a dock, people sooner or later are going to fall off. I concentrated on finding one of them.