Loren typed the address into the worldwide navigational system on her phone. When the blue pin dropped on the map to mark its location, she swore.
It was in the Meatpacking District.
“Why am I not surprised?” she muttered. But she called for a taxi, and when the driver showed up at the gates, and she told him where she would like to go, he looked like he might shit his pants.
It wasn’t an encouraging reaction, but Loren tried not to think as the cab rolled toward the city slums.
49
The taxi crawled to a stop in the heart of the Meatpacking District, not far from a nondescript warehouse with boarded-up windows. The mercury-vapor streetlamps in this area were either burnt out or shot out, and with the sun having set hours ago, the place was shrouded in darkness that was thick and eerie.
Loren glanced at the navigational system on her phone. This area of the city was crumbling and forsaken; it was a place where the streets didn’t have names, and dealers ruled like kings from their restless thrones in opium dens.
Sensing the question poised on her tongue, the cab driver said, “You’ll find the Pit two blocks from here.” He pointed a thick finger at the rows of featureless buildings up ahead.
Vagrants milled about, and raw-boned prostitutes loitered in alleyways and beneath the torn awnings of deserted businesses, their silhouettes distinct in the flickering red light of the bulbs they were stationed beneath.
“You can’t expect me to walk the next two blocks by myself.”
The coward wouldn’t look at her. “This is as far as I’ll go.”
“What is it with cab and bus drivers?” Loren muttered, but she handed him the thirty silver mynet that would cover the carfare and no more, unbuckled her seatbelt, and stepped out into the Meatpacking District.
Decem weather in Angelthene wasn’t much different than any other time of the year, though the wind was cool enough that she wouldn’t look out of place in her hoodie and leggings.
As she hurried down the sidewalk toward the Pit, she pulled up her hood and kept her face tilted downward. The air was heavy and fetid thanks to the slaughterhouses nearby, the malodour of flesh inside the brick facilities making her stomach dizzy.
In the alleys she passed, people rootled through dumpsters bursting with trash bags, and addicts shot up in doorways and on the benches near the green-lit bus stop. Prostitutes flaunting their assets eyed her with judgment from where they stood half-naked on street corners, the odd one pausing to taunt her, or to squawk out half-garbled insults. A couple were witches, a few of them werewolves. But most were human.
Loren had almost made it to the Pit when four men stepped out of the misty gloom of a passageway between buildings, the narrow stretch of cobbles separating an old factory from a one-woman cathouse alit with a single red light on a rotting porch.
They encircled her like wolves rounding up a lamb. Her heart skipped in her chest, her sweaty fingers tightening around the strap of her purse. She had half a second to wish she’d taken out the pistol that was still in the bottom of it.
Where he stood at attention in her shadow, Singer whined and pawed to be let out.
The heaviest of the four men rasped, “What do we have here?” Loren cringed away from the filthy hand that reached out and grazed her hair.
A reedy one with a beard clicked open a switchblade. “Let’s have a taste of those lips.”
“Which ones?” said an oily voice at her ear. Bile burned Loren’s mouth.
She pivoted toward the small space that remained between two of the men, but they closed her in tighter, their bodies shoulder to shoulder. Their breath reeked of cheap drugs, a smell that reminded her of old tires and melted plastic.
“Fresh human meat at the market,” another of the men jeered with a blackened smile.
“You selling, darlin’?” A palm slapped her ass, grabbing a fistful of it, grubby fingers digging in deep. “Orfor sale?”
Loren’s blood roared in her ears as she stumbled away from his touch, her attempt at fleeing only bringing her closer to the other three. One of them barked in her face like a dog, the noise startling her so badly she nearly jumped right out of her skin.
“I wouldn’t touch me if I were you,” she stammered.
“And why’s that?” drawled the same man who’d grabbed her.
All four of them laughed. All four of them looked her over suggestively. The delight shining in their bleary eyes was enough to make her physically ill.
“There’s a Devil in that building.” Her words were louder now and clear as bells, and they did not tremble—not like the rest of her. “And when he finds out you pieces of scum were touching his woman, he’ll tear you apart. Limb from limb, like he does those demons in the Pit.”
As if in affirmation of her words, the arena that housed the Pit rumbled as the people inside it roared at the tops of their lungs.
