Marc Zicree - Angelfire

We climbed down farther into a subbasement, crawled (or floated) through a manufactured hole between the foundations of two buildings, then went up a flight of rickety metal stairs and out another window well. We crossed an alley, trespassed into the creepy backstage area of a defunct movie theater, and moved from there to lose ourselves in the sublevel of an abandoned office building.

There were times I was sure there were people along our route, but I couldn’t see anyone. Magritte and Goldie supplied our only light.

Once in the office building, our guide slowed to a stop. He’d long ago pulled off his shades, but only now did he turn to face us, tugging his hood back as he did. By Magritte’s light I could see he was young, maybe a little older than Enid. Skin the color of coffee with cream, eyes so dark brown they were almost purple.

Enid let out a sudden crack of laughter and threw his arms around the guy, squeezing him so hard I thought he’d break him in two. They went way back apparently, and there was much backslapping and bear-hugging to prove it. When that was done, Enid turned to the rest of us and introduced our rescuer as “Tone, one hell of a session man.”

I stood aside and watched as the guys shook hands all around, thanking him for the neat rescue, and Enid asked, “How’d you find us?”

“Funny about that,” Tone said. “We got this old guy in the ’hood that sort of passes for an oracle. He just seems to know all sorts of stuff that goes on downtown.”

“How?” asked Cal. “How would he know about us? How would he know you’d care?”

“Well, when devas come into this place, just about everybody knows-it sort of changes the vibe in the Red Zone.”

Goldie’s eyes rolled toward the layers of concrete over our heads. “There’s a disturbance in the Force, Luke.”

Tone gave him a glance. “Yeah, sorta like that. Anyway, when stuff like that happens, the old guy always seems to have the story. We ask him how he does it, he just smiles and says, ‘I got friends in high places.’ He told us about you guys when you first come in. Says you’ve got a deva and that you didn’t turn her over to the first scum bucket that comes along. That’s a remarkable thing, around here. Had to check it out. Seeing Enid again, man, that’s a pure surprise.”

“We need a place to sit down and do some serious thinking,” Cal said.

“Sure thing. You all ready to commence onward? Your lady there don’t look so good.”

Everyone turned to look at me. I was leaning against the handrail of a staircase that went up into nowhere. The sudden attention made me want to straighten up. Somehow the message got lost between my brain and my legs. I reeled.

Next thing I knew, Cal was standing in front of me, holding me upright. “You all right? Jesus, Doc, she looks like she’s been scalded.”

Doc was there in a breath, concern pinching his face. He took my hands from Cal, held them up to the weak light from above.

“I can’t see. Goldie …?”

Goldman pushed past Cal, bringing a neat little glow ball for Doc to see by. Doc murmured something in Russian and pressed a finger gently to the back of my hand. “Does that hurt?”

“Just a little. Look, I’m fine. Really. Just kind of winded. And I think Goldman’s cotton candy singed me a little. But I’m okay.” I flashed a weak, nervous smile.

Doc raised a hand to my face, brushing my upper lip. It came away smeared with blood. He looked to Cal.

“What is it?” asked Enid from behind Cal.

“Colleen’s hurt,” said Cal.

“I am not hurt,” I said. “I’ve got a bloody nose. Hasn’t anybody ever seen a bloody nose before?”

Tone was peering at me over Doc’s shoulder. “Man, you musta run into the firewall, huh? That’s gonna sting for a bit. We got stuff that’ll take care of it, though. And I suggest we move on now, if you can, miss, ’cause I can’t guarantee how safe it is down here.”

“The toughs?” Cal jerked his head back up toward where we’d left the Suit and company.

“Hell, no. That surface scum don’t come down here. Other things, though.”

Other things. I didn’t want to find out what kind of other things. “Can we go?” I asked.

Cal brushed hair off my forehead, his eyes searching my face, and something shivered in the air between us, making me wriggle inside. “Are you sure she’ll be all right?”

“Well, not a hundred percent sure,” said Tone. “But I’ve never seen anybody die from it.”

Cal nodded and put us back in motion, at my side every step of the way.

Tone and Enid used their travel time for catching up. You know: “Remember old Fly-by-Night Jones? Well, he got turned into a fruit bat.”

Okay, I’m kidding, but close. Tone let loose with a rush of what happened to the old crowd and who’d been turned into what and who’d just plain disappeared. It wasn’t pleasant. Enid was hearing bad news with practically every other word. This friend or that had gone missing, this family or that was scattered to the four winds, most of the places he called home had been blasted to rubble or looted or both. Weird-looking things were growing or roaming or had taken up residence in parts of their once mundane neighborhood. Made street gangs sound downright cordial.

We finally emerged out of the musty cellars into the cheery red light of day and took a look around. The street was filthy, covered with debris, garbage, and little dunes of blown dust that glittered with glass-normal, comforting urban decay.

“Where are we?” I asked Enid.

He smiled. “Near South Side. Home.”

There wasn’t much left of home. But there was something. The farther we went into the Near South Side, the more people we saw. Some of them recognized Enid and stuck to him, so that by the time we got to where we were going, we’d collected quite a handful of interested parties, musicians mostly.

Tone led us to a night club/restaurant on Wabash. Buddy Guy’s Legends. To Enid, this was something of a religious shrine. To Cal and me, it was the perfect bolt-hole-dark, warm, and inhabited by the first friendly faces we’d seen since we left the Preserve. In the restaurant, I fell into a chair at one of the tables, hoping I didn’t look as bad as I felt. My hopes were in vain. In a matter of minutes Doc had commandeered rags and water and some sort of curative liniment and was all over me with the stuff. I drank some sort of special tea that tasted like licorice and went down like slippery maple syrup.

Meanwhile, Tone told the story of our rescue with only the least bit of exaggeration. His audience didn’t seem either afraid or in awe of Magritte, and they applauded the fact that she hadn’t been lost to the Tough Guys.

Weird. It was almost like being back in the previously real world. Candlelight and lamplight reflected off polished tabletops, making the place feel real cozy. Of course, there’s nothing unusual about muted lamplight in a bar. There was a constant throb of rhythm in the air, too, as if a jukebox played somewhere out of sight.

Behind the long, curving bar was a chubby old fellow named Jelly and a stunningly beautiful young woman he introduced as Venus. I wondered if anyone around here kept the names they were born with. Tone, it turned out, was not short for Anthony, but a reference to the fact that Tone was a guitarist obsessed with the sound of his “axe.” The death of electricity had put a nasty crimp in his universe. He’d taken up the acoustic guitar, he told us, and was learning to play the saxophone from the neighborhood oracle.

Tone and his friends wrangled food and drink for us and for the restaurant’s other patrons. I didn’t see money or barter change hands, so I suspected it was less a restaurant than a neighborhood mission.