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“You’re in the city?”
“Yes.”
“Why the hell didn’t you stay out? I called you. Didn’t you get my messages?”
“Yeah, I got them.” I glanced to Holden and Desmond, who both seemed to think I was a maniac for having a chat on the phone right then. “Tyler, what the hell is going on?”
“We’re not a hundred percent sure. Emilio is out in Jersey setting up a task force, but the origin of the event is still unclear. No one is taking credit for it yet, so we think there’s a chance it’s a supernatural phenomenon rather than a malicious assault.”
“Wait, you think there’s a chance someone planned this?” I’d assumed right away something hinky had occurred and the dead had risen accidentally as a result. I hadn’t yet considered someone might have sent the walking dead into New York as a way to attack the city.
“No, I just said we don’t think that right now.”
“But there’s a possibility.”
“Sure. At this point anything is possible. I’ve got corpses littering the Brooklyn Bridge, Secret. I’m not counting anything out right now, y’know?”
“What about the fires? I don’t think these guys can even clap their hands, from what I’ve seen, let alone turn buildings into bonfires.”
“We’re not so sure how those started. Could be vandals. Things are kind of going to hell in a handbasket.” The line crackled, and I feared I’d lost him. “You okay?”
“Right now, yes.”
“You protected?”
I smirked, because I wasn’t sure if he was worried about my personal safety or about the possibility he might lose one of his best assets for the government’s work with the supernatural.
“I’ve got a vampire, a werewolf and a witch. And a heck of a lot of spare bullets. I’ll be okay for a while.”
“Get yourself somewhere safe. When things clear up, I’ll call you again, see if I can’t get someone out there to pick you up.”
“Tyler,” I said quickly, before he could disconnect. “Where are you? Do you know where Mercedes is?”
“We’re both at the precinct. Things are okay right now with a couple other cops, but this building wasn’t designed to withstand a siege. I don’t know what’s going to happen if things get any worse.”
I looked around the street, the sidewalk littered in broken glass, glowing orange from the light of the fires.
“How much worse can it get?”
Chapter Three
Stupid question.
A block later we ran into the kind of trouble that still had a pulse.
Dressed in black and white, with red bandanas around their necks or mouths, a group of about twenty men was blocking our access to the next street. They had turned the sidewalks into a bottleneck, so any unlucky pedestrians were force-fed into the middle of 9th Avenue, where the gang had moved a group of cars into the center of the street as a makeshift fort. They milled around the perimeter, and there was no way to escape their attention when we stepped off 57th to cross.
“Hey. Hey, hey. What we got here?” A big dude with bulky arms hopped down from a nearby car, holding a huge hunting knife with the unnerving comfort of someone who got to use the weapon a lot.
“Secret…” Genie whispered.
“It’s okay.”
I don’t know what it was about our current situation, but I felt a sense of focus and control I’d been sorely missing for months. Ever since my return from California and my horrific torture at the hands of The Doctor, I’d been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Everything from flashbacks, to nightmares, to panic attacks. You name it, I’d been dealing with it.
But the moment I’d stepped out of the car, I felt…whole. I knew a point would come when my ghosts came back, and I would need to deal with my problems again. For the time being, though, I was grateful my brain was running on instinct rather than emotion. When I told Genie things would be okay, I meant it.
I wasn’t going to let a gang of street toughs touch my sister.
