James Baldwin - Stained Glass

The moon cast crazy shadows over the scrap that had piled up to the left of the cracked road, which was half old concrete, half wet gravel. There were huge piles of rusted metal everywhere: the hulks of buses, small boats, even a horse float. Binah followed me at full lope, a ghost on my heels as I ran. There was no keeping her in the car, especially if she was able to warn me of dangers I couldn’t see.

At the end of the road, I saw the car I’d been following parked near the waterside entrance to the ruined grain terminal. Up close, the enormous structure looked even more like a coffin: a grimy, rectangular hulk sandwiched between the Henry Street Basin on one side, the Gowanus Canal on the other, and the continuation of this shitty strip of gravel to the left. Ahead and to the left was the shell of a smaller building – still two stories high – to my right was nothing but polluted water and a flimsy dock anchoring three or four derelict ships. I didn’t have high hopes for Angkor. Gowanus Canal was a dump site for every Mob in the city. One famous detective had wryly noted that Gowanus was the only body of water in the world that was ninety percent guns. He could be assured that the other ten percent was dead bodies.

Three men – the two from the warehouse and a tall, broad-shouldered, hulking figure I couldn’t make out – were smoking, talking and laughing around what looked like a barrel fire in front of a faded white watchtower. I drew my pistol and dipped down into a cross-step jog, heartbeat tapping against my teeth. Binah and I crossed from the scrap pile to the outhouse, where I slid along the wall and looked around the corner, right at the back of someone’s head. The static guard was sitting on a fold-out plastic chair away from the other men, rubbing his gloved hands and huffing on them.

As I was planning my trajectory, Binah darted out of the shadows, streaking across the yard at a run. I had to bite my tongue to stop from calling her as she pelted between the guard’s boots and bolted at a full gallop for the building.

“Hey, what the fuck?” The guard stood up in alarm, bringing his machinegun to bear. With a finger on the trigger, he stepped back reflexively, scraping his chair a foot and a half or so closer to me and vanishing out of sight of his comrades on the other side of the building. Then, he relaxed a little. “Fuckin’ raccoo—”

I pistol-whipped him as hard as I could across the back of his skull. He crumpled like a heap of stones. I grasped him by the ankles and dragged him back behind the timber, took a minute with the knife to make sure he wasn’t going to get up again, and relieved him of his weapon, a set of keys, and a packet of gum. He was toting a PP-90M1, a cheap Russian military surplus machinegun. It packed a 64-round 9mm magazine, which I unloaded, checked and reloaded. Not a bad start to the night’s scavenging.

Binah was waiting for me in the shadow of the building, smugly washing her face in at the base of an open window. I slung the gun over my shoulder and holstered the pistol, drawing the knife in its place. Smartass cat.

Around the corner, the three guys were still squatting around the fire. Their attention was on the road. I’d taken out the one watching the building, and I’d be ass deep in the building before they realized a thing.

As quickly and quietly as I could, I crossed the open space and pushed myself in through the broken window frame. It let me into a single long concrete chamber that had to be nearly five hundred feet long. Twin rows of concrete pylons marched off into utter darkness; the canal gurgled to our left through gaping, broken windows. The entire floor was empty, but the stench was incredible. It was the smell of meat left to rot in the sun, the cheap perfume and vomit reek of un-life.

I had a full pint of milk and a dozen eggs – the weirdest shit I’d ever taken on a hit, but after the Animal-Heads and DOG wasps, I doubted I’d ever be without eggs again. I pulled one out of my pack and palmed it in my throwing hand as I started out cautiously towards the end of the building nearest the water, following my nose and watching as Binah dashed from shadow to shadow. The guys outside were laughing at something: I heard them as I passed on the way to the stairwell. I was just about to break away from the pillars when a scuffle echoed through the huge room. The sound bounced off the walls like a rifle shot, and I froze mid-breath, scanning the darkness ahead for life – or not.

After a few seconds of waiting, another sentry swaggered out of the entry to the stairs, looming in the stark light. My chest twinged. I recognized him. Ovar was six and a half feet of Georgian muscle, impossible to miss. He was dressed in a puffy jacket and hunter’s cap, cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger of one hand, the other resting on top of his machine gun. He was smiling as he swept the room and turned away from me, heading back in towards the stairs. It was all I could do to control my gorge. I thought he’d been one of the better men in this place. He was funny, he was friendly, and he’d always been polite and affable to me… and he’d raped a girl on camera, because he was all-in on the Organizatsiya and everything it did.

And then, something pushed through the air around me. Even Ovar stopped, his back to me as he shivered in the wave of sudden cold that rippled through the still air of the grain elevator. Another mage was coasting through the waters like a shark filtering blood through its sinuses, turning this way and that. He had Mass, a real heavy presence… a presence that I instinctively recognized. It was the Spook that Nic had bought to take me down. He was here, upstairs, and Ovar was in the way.

I wanted to kill him, but I’m five foot five in shoes and he was far too big for me to stab. Gunning him down would alert every person inside and outside the building. I clamped my jaws together until my teeth creaked, then turned and threw the egg down the aisle. It sailed out, and broke against something with a wet ‘splotch’.

“Eh?” Ovar turned, eyes scanning the room. “Bors? That you?”

For several long moments, I said nothing. Every sound in here was amplified, and any motion I made would crack out into the air. As Ovar waited, looking for anything out of the ordinary, another push of magic rippled over us. I was running out of time.

“Fuck, this place is creepy.” He muttered, and turned back.

I hissed. And tried to throw my voice. Ovar whipped around again, advancing to the door this time.

“Hey,” he said. His voice echoed, the word ringing out multiple times against the walls. “Cut it the fuck out!”

As quietly as I could, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the first thing I found: a quarter and the dime that Christopher had given me. The coin didn’t mean that much to me, so I flung them both, close to the ground. They rolled and skittered, and Ovar started forward. Sweat was rolling down his face now. He had his finger on the trigger, gun braced against his shoulder as he advanced into the room in the direction of the noise. If he heard or saw me, I was deader than the canal outside.

As he left, I half-scrambled, half-crawled into the stairwell, waiting a moment until Binah caught up. What remaining fur she had was standing on end. The magic was only getting stronger, whipping down the channel of the stairs. I ran up them, trying to be quiet on the rusted steel treads. At the top of the stairwell was a door.

My eyes were still adjusting as I got to the landing. I reached for the handle, and stopped at the last moment as a hot buzz, like static electricity, crawled up my arm from my fingertips. In the gloom, a figure loomed out at me from the wood. It was an eye. The iris was blank, and struck through with a cross.