Page 45 of The Shattered City

In a blink, Jianyu had taken Cela’s hand and wrapped her in light, protecting them from the patrol’s view. The men from the patrol were already running toward her and the place where Jianyu and Cela had just vanished from sight.

For so long, Viola had tried to avoid using her magic to kill. She had believed it was the worst sort of sin to use her gift to take life rather than save it, but the past few weeks had shown her how foolish she had been. Even with Libitina, she had been using her affinity all along, channeling her connection to blood through the intention of the blade. Dolph had given her the knife because he’d understood that she needed to have that measure of distance. Now she had come to accept that, affinity or blade, each death on her soul had been a choice she had made.

Once, she had cared for the state of her soul. She had wished for a different future. She had dreamed, perhaps, of being worthy of a different sort of life. But Ruby had wiped away that hope and replaced it with the understanding that the other life she’d imagined would never be.

She let her affinity fly free, and the first man fell. She relished the look of fear in his partner’s eyes before she finished him as well.

When the area went silent, when the only sound was the constant hum of the ever-present city beyond, she waited for the regret that always came, the heaviness of remorse that so often weighed down her soul after she took a life. But this time, it did not arrive. In its place was a sort of empty ache, a hollowness that felt neither like salvation nor sin. It felt like the beginning of something she could not name.

Looking over her shoulder, Viola searched for some sign that Jianyu and Cela were still there. But nothing stirred. No one appeared.

Viola knew that she was completely alone in the strange silence of that back alley. She allowed herself a moment of grief to mourn the girl she had once wanted to be—the girl she never would become. Then she pulled herself together. There were still men in the building who hunted them, men who might be doing harm to Abel and Joshua. If it came to the choice between her and them, her soul was already too heavily marked for hesitation or regret.

OMFUG

1983—The Bowery

Harte’s skin was still damp with sweat and his legs were unsteady as he carried his worry and regret up the trash-strewn steps of the subway exit into the cold, slush-covered night. When he reached the street above, he stopped short, overwhelmed by the changed city around him. Everything seemed brighter here. But then, beneath the changed facade, he was struck by how familiar it all felt. The low-slung buildings. The people milling about in groups on wide sidewalks. The way the city pulsed in the night. But above him, the sky was starless.

The sign on the corner read BLEECKER STREET. He knew that name.

Tucking his arms around himself against the bitter cold, Harte adjusted the strap of the satchel to secure it and started to walk. His shoes slipped on the ice-covered walk as he passed a group of people huddled against the cold, wreaths of smoke and breath circling them. In the distance, he heard the screaming of sirens. It was only a matter of time before someone started looking for him, and he didn’t want to give himself away by looking back—or by looking guilty. As he traversed the short blocks of Bleecker, the sirens grew closer, so he picked up his pace.

He turned a corner, and then suddenly he knew where he was. Before him was the broad boulevard that was the Bowery.

The elevated trains were gone. Once, the tracks had shadowed the wide sidewalks, showering coal and ash on the people below. Now, when he looked up, all he could see was the heaviness of the sky. The street, once cobblestone and brick, was now a smooth stretch of dark ribbon marred only by the filthy, drifting snow and the occasional water-filled pothole. The lights lining the street were blindingly bright, turning the night into a false day. It reminded him of how the area around the Haymarket had once been in his own time. That part of the city had been called the Satan’s Circus, and rightly so, but this version of the Bowery could likely wear that name just as well.

As he walked along, he saw men sleeping curled beneath old newspapers in freezing doorways. Many buildings in the area were caged or boarded, but the sidewalks weren’t empty. Groups of people, young and old, milled about, ignoring the approaching sirens.

Everything had changed, but the city Harte had once known was still there. The names of shops and saloons were different now, but the buildings remained. The bones of the Bowery were the same, and he could almost see the ghost of his own time beneath the strange, new surface.

Still, the changes were disorienting, and he wasn’t fooled into confidence by this glimpse of the past. The sirens were even louder now, and he understood it was only a matter of time before the Guard would arrive at the station he’d just exited and begin tracking him on foot. With the tracks he was leaving in the snow, he would be easy enough to find.

He couldn’t keep running, and he couldn’t chance leading them to the place he was headed. Instead, he needed to find somewhere to hide away until the danger passed and he could continue on.

Across the Bowery, there was a crowd of people gathered beneath a dirty white canopy emblazoned with a series of letters that didn’t make sense as any kind of word. He couldn’t tell what the place was, exactly—a saloon, maybe? The people seemed to be waiting for something at the entrance. Or perhaps they were just waiting. A perpetual cloud of smoke hung around them, and their laughter and voices carried through the cold night air.

The sirens were nearly there. In the distance came the barking of dogs and shouting, and Harte knew his time was up. The crowd under the awning would give him some cover at least, and if he could get inside…

He tried not to hurry across the street, because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. It took everything he had to keep his steps slow and measured, and the wide stretch of even road felt like an endless chasm between him and possible safety. Finally, he reached the building. Keeping his head down and his shoulders hunched, he inched behind a cluster of people waiting in line just as three vehicles emblazoned with the word “police” careened into the nearby intersection. One bore another symbol—Harte didn’t need to see the details to recognize it as the Philosopher’s Hand.

The same symbol had been proudly displayed on a banner back in Chicago at the Coliseum, where Jack nearly had become the vice presidential nominee. The Hand’s appearance here had a chill running down Harte’s neck that had nothing to do with the weather.

The sirens had finally drawn the crowd’s attention, and the people in line around Harte started craning their necks, peering around one another to see what the commotion was about. Meanwhile, shards of red and blue light chased along the nearby storefronts, glinting off gated windows as uniformed men exited the vehicles. Two of the men were dressed in the boxy coats of the Guard, and their familiar silver medallions glinted in the brightness of the streetlights.

The pair of Guards said something to the others before heading toward the crowd. Harte slipped behind the person nearest to him and then began making his way to the door, using the distracted queue as cover. No one bothered to look at him. They were all too busy watching the action in the street to care that he was bypassing them in the line.

At the entrance, a bouncer sat on a stool, his head also turned toward the commotion in the streets. He was dressed in a dark leather duster and had his hands crossed over a barrel-shaped chest. Harte was nearly past when the guy put out his arm suddenly, blocking his way as he scowled.

“The cover’s three.” He held out his hand, waiting.

“Three?” Harte didn’t know what the man was referring to.

“Dollars,” the bouncer said, irritation growing in his expression.

Three dollars? It was an exorbitant sum. More than a day’s wage for most working people. Harte couldn’t imagine giving over that much money just to enter some sort of saloon. Not that the price mattered. Three dollars or three cents, he didn’t have a penny to his name.

But he couldn’t simply stand there waiting to be found.

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