Chapter Eight
Eight
When we finally get to New York, Luke parks the car under a shaded overpass. For the past fifty miles, we’ve been chasing the glowing lights of the city. Now, we’re in the thick of it, the constant honking and sirens a cacophony of noise around us.
“We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot,” Luke says, tugging a backpack from the back seat. He hands me my duffel.
“Thanks,” I say, voice rusty from disuse. We spent much of the drive in silence despite the hundreds of questions burning at the back of my throat. Every time I tried to ask one, Luke cut me off for a directions update or I swallowed it back down, not wanting to risk him changing his mind.
Luke closes the back door and pops the trunk. My jaw drops.
“Where did you get an entire arsenal?”
“Shh!” He glances around to make sure we’re alone. Turning back to the trunk, he rummages through the weapons. Maybe I should have felt trepidation before now, but it’s not until Luke picks up a Glock and tucks it into a holster that I truly wonder if I’m in over my head.
“How’s your aim?” he asks, pulling out another.
“Nonexistent?” I stare at it, stomach flipping. “I shot clay pigeons with my ex once.”
“How many did you hit?”
“None.”
“Out of?”
“A lot.”
He peers at the inside of the trunk. Despite there being dozens of metal and steel and pointy things, it’s organized. Some are in unzipped duffels and others hang on small hooks poked into the carpeted interior.
“My best shot is with arrows,” I say.
“As in a bow and arrows?”
I nod. “I went through an archery phase, thanks to the Hunger Games phenomenon. I was pretty good, too.”
“The Hunger Games?”
“You’ve never heard of The Hunger Games?”
He hesitates, then shakes his head.
I gawk. “It’s only some of the most poignant literature to grace the shelves this century. A blend of social commentary on capitalism and greed and poverty and—”
“Where does the bow come in?”
“The main character—Katniss Everdeen—uses it. And don’t even get me started on Peeta Mellark, my first love—”
“I don’t have a bow,” Luke cuts me off, clearly not interested in hearing my soliloquy about how the “if it weren’t for the baby” line single-handedly changed me as a reader. “Besides, they’re impractical. Too slow.”
“I told you the same about our CRM software the week you started, but it still took you until last Wednesday to look into the new one I scouted.”
“I knew you were bitter about that.”
“You don’t take my suggestions seriously.”
He frowns, as if deeply insulted I think he doesn’t value my opinions. “Not true.”
He pulls a dagger from a secret compartment where a spare tire usually sits. The black blade is identical to the one he sent Beliar packing with earlier, which he tucked into the back of his belt and covered with his shirt.
“They’re a twin set,” he explains, handing it to me by the blade so I can take the hilt. It’s not as heavy as I expected. “Should we get separated, drop it on the ground and it will point in the direction of its pairing. They’re like compasses. They’ll always find each other.”
“Where am I supposed to put it?”
Some more rummaging and he supplies me with a sheath. “Your thigh.”
I strap it on my right thigh over my jeans and slide the dagger in. “I feel like Lara Croft.”
“Who?”
“Your pop culture knowledge needs some work,” I mutter as he continues outfitting himself with weapons. He finishes by shrugging on an oversized leather jacket that’s—you guessed it—black.
Satisfied with his assortment, he closes the trunk. Arms crossed over my chest, I raise a brow. “What? You didn’t want to take the spear?”
“I’m still debating if I want to take you.” He looks at the closed trunk like he’s considering locking me in it. “This is your last chance to change your mind. Once we’re on that train—”
“It’s a one-way ticket to where the sun don’t shine,” I finish for him, forcing fake confidence into my tone. “I’ve read the fine print. I’m going. We’re wasting time.”
He bristles but says nothing else as we step out from under the overpass. The darkness makes a familiar swell of fear rise. During the ride, I packed it down since it’s never as bad when someone else drives. Now, it’s impossible to ignore the lengthening shadows.
“What exactly does an entrance to hell look like?” I ask as we turn into a more populated area.
“Is this not hellish enough?” Luke gestures at the push of bodies we stop with, waiting for the crosswalk light to change.
“Not a fan of the Big Apple, huh?”
“A little too dense for my taste.” The light gives the walking go-ahead. Like a school of fish, we make our way across. “You?”
“Love it. Used to come every December to see the Rockefeller Center tree with my mom,” I explain, keeping my pace brisk as if it might help me outrun the onslaught of memories.
“We’d stay for the weekend and go to a Broadway show.
It was my favorite place. When I moved away from home, the plan was to come here.
” To run here. “But I didn’t have a job, or much in savings since I’d been in school.
I only got as far as Tarrentown before—” I freaked out behind the wheel and almost crashed my car. Again.
I stumble, both over the truth and the curb. Luke’s hand shoots out to steady me, and so does my well-worn excuse. “Before my car broke down. The fix was expensive so I started applying for jobs and apartments and never left. But New York is still my final destination. It reminds me of her.”
“You were close with her?” he asks. We stop at another light.
“Yes.” I smooth the simple word out on my tongue so it doesn’t sound as strangled as I feel.
The icon changes and I plow onward. Luke’s steps match mine and we reach the other side in unison. Another turn has us entering the explosion of lights and screens that is Times Square.
A smile cuts across my face, the magic of it shocking me like it always did when I was little.
As usual, it’s packed with people. I glance at Luke to find him already looking at me with a strange expression, like he’s never seen me before.
The lights dancing across his face make him glow in a purpley hue.
“What?” I laugh. The energy in the air is contagious, the scent of roasted nuts and Krispy Kreme and halal food surrounding me in a tantalizing haze.
The word breaks whatever weird trance he was in. He shakes his head, glancing at his watch. “Shit. We’re going to miss the train.”
We hightail it through the crowd to the Forty-Second Street subway station. “Don’t we need to wait by the tracks?” I ask as we hurry past the turnstiles.
“Not those tracks.” He pulls me toward a dirty, white-tiled wall that’s in the opposite direction of the crowd.
I look behind me, confused. “There are other tracks below the main ones?”
“If you know where to look.”
I face forward in time to watch him push open a sketchy-looking door leading to a staircase.
Except, the door wasn’t there a second ago. I’m sure of it.
“What the—”
“Like I said,” he says, ushering me through the doorway, “you have to know where to look.”
That ominous nugget is all I get as the sound of our pounding feet floods the steep stairwell.
We go down and down and down, the pressure making my ears ache.
I try not to imagine the tons and tons of earth above our heads, not to mention the buildings and people and cars.
If it were to collapse, no one would be the wiser that we’re buried down here, especially if, like me, they can’t even see the entrance.
Maybe I would get added to Tarrentown’s growing list of vanishing women.
Maybe I already have been.
At the bottom, Luke holds the door for me and I burst onto a platform, sucking in deep lungfuls of musty, damp air.
Unlike the regular tracks above, there aren’t stairways and elevators in the middle, just a giant slab of seemingly never-ending cracked concrete.
A single light shines at the far end of the platform.
“We’re not in the clear yet. We still need to get tickets,” Luke says.
Despite the urgency in his tone, his palm on the small of my back nudging me toward the light is surprisingly gentle. Though my lungs burn, I force my legs to match his rushed pace.
“Tickets?” I pant. “We need to pay to get to hell?”
He shoots me a perplexed look. “Of course. How else are they supposed to fund the upkeep of infrastructure?”
I match his bewilderment with my own. “I…didn’t think that was a thing.”
His expression flickers with amusement. “I’ll explain more once we’re on the train, but it’s really not so different from the overworld in that department. Money rules all, even if it looks different from the money we’re used to.”
“The overworld,” I echo. The word fell from his mouth so easily. “And I suppose we’re going to the underworld?”
“It’s all the same thing. Hell, underworld, the abyss.”
“So anyone can get to down under whenever they want?”
He hesitates, though his steps don’t. “Not necessarily. The only reason we found the staircase is because I could see the door. That’s not normally visible unless you know how to look for it.”
He stops suddenly. We’re close enough that I can finally see what the light is illuminating: a ticket booth. A lone person sits behind the glass.
“Shit,” Luke swears, glancing at his watch again.
“Why’d we stop?” I ask, wrapping my arms around myself. It’s freezing down here.
His gaze jerks to mine, a line between his brows. “You can’t—”
He’s cut off by the blare of a train whistle. The platform quakes beneath our feet.
His hand wraps around my arm, tugging me toward the ticket booth. Shivers race down my spine as the temperature drops the closer we get.
“Two tickets for the incoming train to hell,” he tells the woman behind the glass.
“Please,” I add.
She glances up from her monitor. Her glasses sit low on her nose and her pupils are so large her eyes look black.
Despite not sporting wrinkles, it’s difficult to tell her age, like she could be anywhere from thirty to fifty.
The name tag pinned to her black uniform reads Esmar—Customer Service Specialist.
“Back of the line, sir,” she drawls in a voice that suggests she could do this all day.
The line? I look behind me, but it’s just an empty platform.
“We need to get on this train,” Luke insists as another whistle pierces the air. The train’s headlight shines onto the tracks, though it has yet to emerge from the tunnel.
The woman is entirely unbothered, her nails making a click…
click…click sound as she types something on her keyboard at a snail’s pace.
“We closed outbound tickets for this train thirty minutes ago. You can purchase two for the next train that leaves at the same time tomorrow. If you buy online, you save ten percent. We’re trying to go paperless. ”
“We can’t wait until tomorrow.” I shoot Luke a panicked look as the train pulls up.
“Sorry for the inconvenience.” Esmar does not look one bit sorry. “I’m happy to give you the number to our support line. A representative can transfer you to speak to a manager.”
“I don’t want to speak to a manager,” Luke growls, “I want to get on that train.”
He jabs his thumb toward the train coming to a stop. The door on the car closest slides open.
“Unfortunately, there’s really nothing I can—”
She’s cut off by Luke, who leans forward to speak directly into the intercom drilled into the plexiglass. A string of words in an unfamiliar language leaves his lips in a lethal hiss that makes Esmar’s eyes widen to the point where I can see the piss-yellow ring around her pupil.
“Of course,” she sputters, her entire demeanor changing. Suddenly, she can’t type fast enough. Clickclickclickclickclick. A whirring sound. She pushes two tickets through the gap in the glass. I was wrong about her noisy typing being due to her nails. She has claws. “On the house.”
“You’re too kind.” Luke grabs the tickets, passing one to me.
“What did you say to her? Was that Latin?” I ask as we hurry toward the train.
“Yes,” Luke replies, though he ignores my initial question. Another cold spell passes over me as we reach the edge of the platform. He gestures me through the door. “Ladies first.”