Valiant

Page 18

"V-val?" Ruth's voice trembled as she looked around.
"This is my best friend, Ruth," Val said before she realized how juvenile that sounded. "She came looking for me."
"I thought we were your best friends." Dave smiled a smile that was half-leer and Val regretted letting him touch her, letting him think he had some power over her.
"We're all best friends," Lolli said, shooting him a glare as she rested one of her leg's on Luis's, her boot nearly touching his crotch. "All the bestest of friends."
Dave's face crumpled.
"If you were any kind of friend to her, you wouldn't drag her into this shit," Luis told Val, twisting away from Lolli.
"How many people are down here? Come out where I can see you," a gruff voice called.
Two policemen walked down the stairs. Lolli froze, the spoon in her hand still over the fire. The drug started to blacken and burn. Dave laughed, a weird crazy laugh that went on and on.
Flashlights cut through the dim station. Lolli dropped her spoon, grown too hot to hold, and the beams converged on her, then moved to blind Val. She shaded her eyes with her hand.
"All of you." One of the cops was a woman, her face stern. "Stand against the wall, hands on your head."
One beam caught Luis and the male cop nudged him with his boot. "Go. Let's go. We heard some reports there were kids down here, but I didn't believe it."
Val stood slowly and walked to the wall, Ruth beside her. She felt so sick with guilt that she wanted to vomit. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
Dave just stood stock still in the middle of the platform. He was shaking.
"Something wrong?" the female cop shouted, making it not at all a question. "Against the wall!" With that, her speech turned to barking. Where she had stood was a black dog, larger than a Rottweiler, with foam running from its mouth.
"What the hell?" The other cop turned, pulled out his gun. "That your dog? Call it off."
"It's not our dog," Dave said with an eerie smile.
The dog turned toward Dave, growling and barking. Dave just laughed.
"Masollino?" the policeman yelled. "Masollino?"
"Stop fucking around," Luis called. "Dave, what are you doing?"
Ruth dropped her arms from her head. "What's going on?"
The dog's teeth were bright as it advanced against the policeman. He pointed the gun at it and the dog stopped. It whined and he hesitated. "Where's my partner?"
Lolli giggled and the man looked up sharply, then quickly back at the dog.
Val took a step forward, Ruth still holding her arm so tight that it hurt. "Dave," she hissed. "Come on. Let's go."
"Dave!" Luis yelled. "Turn her back!"
The dog moved at that, turning and leaping toward where they stood, lolling tongue a slash of red in the dark.
Two sharp pops were followed by silence. Val opened her eyes, not even aware she had closed them. Ruth screamed.
Lying on the ground was the female cop, bleeding from her neck and side. The other officer stared in horror at his own gun. Val froze, too stunned to move, her feet like lead. Her mind was still groping for a solution, some way to undo what had been done. This is just an illusion, she told herself. Dave is playing a joke on all of us.
Lolli jumped down into the well of the tracks and took off, gravel crunching under her boots. Luis grabbed Dave's arm and pulled him toward the tunnels. "We have to get out of here," he said.
The police officer looked up as Val leaped off the side of the platform, Ruth behind her. Luis and Dave were already disappearing into the darkness.
A shot rang out behind them. Val didn't look back. She ran along the track, clutching Ruth's hand like they were little kids crossing the road. Ruth squeezed twice, but Val could hear her start to sob.
"Cops never understand anything," Dave said as they moved through the tunnels. "They got all these quotas about arresting people and that's all they care about. They found our place and they were just going to lock it up so nobody could ever use it and where's the sense in that? We're not hurting anyone by being down there. It's our place. We found it."
"What are you talking about?" Luis said. "What were you thinking back there? Are you bug-fuck crazy?"
"It's not my fault," Dave said. "It's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault."
Val wished he would shut up.
"That's right," Luis said, his voice shaking. "It's nobody's fault."
They emerged in the Canal Street station, hopping on the platform and getting on the first train that stopped. The car was mostly empty, but they stood anyway, braced against the door as the train swayed along.
Ruth had stopped crying, but her makeup made dark smudges on her cheeks and her nose was red. Dave seemed emptied of all emotion, his eyes not meeting anyone else's. Val couldn't imagine what he was feeling at that moment. She wasn't even sure how to name what she felt.
"We can crash in the park tonight," Luis said. "Dave and I did that before we found the tunnel."
"I'm going to take Ruth to Penn Station," Val said suddenly. She thought of the policewoman, the memory of her death like a weight that got heavier with each step away from the corpse. She didn't want Ruth dragged down with the rest of them.
Luis nodded. "And you're going with her?"
Val hesitated.
"I'm not getting on that train alone," Ruth said fiercely.
"There's someone I have to say good-bye to," Val said. "I can't just disappear."
They got off at the next stop, transferring to an uptown train and rode to Penn Station, then walked upstairs to check the times. Afterward they settled in the Amtrak waiting area, and Lolli bought coffee and soup that none of them touched.
"Meet me here in an hour," Ruth said. "The train leaves fifteen minutes after that. You can say good-bye to this guy in that time, right?"
"If I'm not back, you have to get on the train," Val said. "Promise me."
Ruth nodded, her face pale. "So long as you promise to be back."
"We're going to be by the weather castle in Central Park," Lolli said. "If you miss your train."
"I'm not going to miss it," Val said, glancing at Ruth.
Lolli swirled a spoon into a tub of soup, but didn't raise it to her mouth. "I know. I'm just saying."
Val stumbled out into the cold, glad to be away from them all.
When she got to the bridge, it was still light enough to see the East River, brown as coffee left too long on the burner. Her head hurt and the muscles in her arms spasmed and she realized that she hadn't had a dose of Never since the evening before.
Never more than two days in a row. She couldn't remember when that rule had been forgotten and the new rule had become every day and sometimes more than that.
Val knocked on the stump and slipped inside the bridge, but despite the threat of daylight, Ravus was gone. She considered finger painting a message on a torn grocery flier, but she was so tired that she decided to wait a little while longer. Sitting down in the club chair, the scents of old paper, leather, and fruit lulled her into leaning back her head and parting the curtain just slightly. She sat for an oblivious hour, watching the sun dip lower, setting the sky aflame, but Ravus didn't return and she only felt worse. Her muscles, which had ached like they did after exercise, now burned like a charley horse that woke you from sleep.
She looked through his bottles and potions and mixtures, careless of what she disturbed and where things were moved, but she found not a single granule of Never to take away the pain.
A family was finishing their picnic on the rocks as Val shuffled into Central Park, the mother packing up leftover sandwiches, a lanky daughter pushing one of her brothers. The two boys were twins, Val noticed. She'd always found twins sort of creepy, as though only one of them could be the real one. The father glanced at Val, but his eyes rested on a cyclist's long, bare legs as he slowly chewed his food.
Val walked on slowly, legs aching, past a lake thick with algae, where a riderless boat floated along in the dimming light. An older couple strolled by the bank, arm in arm, as a jogger in spandex huffed his way around them, mp3 player bobbing against his biceps. Normal people with normal problems.
The path continued over a courtyard whose walls were carved with berries and birds, vines so intricate they nearly looked alive, blooming roses, and less familiar flowers.
Val stopped to lean against a tree, its roots exposed and tangled like the pattern of veins under her skin, the pewter bark of the trunk, wet and dark with frozen sap. She'd been walking for a while, but there was no castle in sight.
Three boys with low-slung pants passed, one bouncing a basketball off his friend's back.
"Where's the weather castle?" she called.
One boy shook his head. "No such thing."
"She means Belvedere Castle," said the other, pointing his hand at an angle, halfway back in the direction she'd come from. "Over the bridge and through the Ramble."
Val nodded. Over the bridge and through the woods. Everything hurt, but she kept going, anticipating the sting of the needle and the sweet relief it would bring. She thought back to Lolli sitting by the fire with the spoon in her hand and her breath stopped at the thought that all the Never was still back there, in the tunnels, with the dead woman, then hated herself that that was what she worried about, that that was what stopped her breath.
The Ramble was a maze of trails, crossing one another, trailing off into dead ends, and doubling back on themselves. Some paths appeared intentional, others seemed created by pedestrians sick of trying to pick their way through the fickle course. Val trudged along, crunching leaves and twigs, her hands in her pockets, gripping her skin through the thin backing of the coat as though digging fingers could punish her body into not hurting.
In the cover of the patchy branches, two men were twined together, one of them in a suit and overcoat, the other in jeans and denim jacket.
At the top of the hill was a large, gray castle with a spire that reached far above the tree line. It appeared to be a grand and ancient estate, rendered strange by being set against the shining lights of the city at dusk, a thing completely out of place. As Val walked closer, she saw that an array of taxidermied creatures were just inside the window, their black eyes watching her through the glass.
"Hey," a familiar voice called.
Val turned to see Ruth leaning up against a pillar. Before she could think of what to say, she noticed Luis stretched out against the landing that overlooked a lake and a baseball diamond, kissing Lolli with deep, wet, soft kisses.
"I knew you never intended to show up," Ruth said, shaking her head.
"You said that you would get on the train even if I didn't," Val said, trying for self-righteous anger, but the words came out sounding lamely defensive.
Ruth crossed her arms over her chest. "Whatever."
"Where's Dave?" Val asked, looking around. The park was getting darker and she didn't see him anywhere close by.
Ruth shrugged and reached for a cup by her feet. "He went off to do some thinking or something. Luis went after him, but came back alone. I guess he's freaked out. Shit, I'm freaked out—that woman changed into a dog and now she's dead."
Val didn't know how to explain things so that Ruth would understand, especially because it would make everything so much worse. It was better to believe that the cop had turned into a dog than that she had been turned into one. "Dave's not going to be happy about that." Val gestured with her chin toward Lolli and Luis, ignoring the question of magic altogether.
Ruth grimaced. "It's disgusting. Those callous fuckers."
"I don't get it. All this time she's been after him and he picks now to get it on?" Val couldn't understand. Luis was an asshole, but he cared about his brother. It wasn't like him to leave Dave to wander around Central Park while he got it on with a girl.
Ruth frowned and held out the cup she was holding. "They're your friends. Here, have some tea. It's disgustingly sweet, but at least it's warm."
Val took a sip, letting the liquid warm her throat, trying to ignore the way her hand was shaking.
Luis pulled back from Lolli, and gave Val a lopsided grin. "Hey, when did you show up?"
"Do either you have any Never?" Val blurted. She didn't think she could stand the pain much longer. Even her jaw felt cramped.
Luis shook his head and looked at Lolli. "No," she said. "I dropped it. Did you get anything from Ravus?"
Val took a deep breath, trying not to panic. "He wasn't there."
"Did you see Dave on your way in?" Lolli asked.
Val shook her head.
"Let's go down to the crash spot," Luis said. "I think its dark enough to keep us hidden."
"Can Dave find us?" Ruth asked.
"Sure," Luis said. "He'll know where to look. We slept there before."
Val gritted her teeth in frustration, but she followed the others as they jumped the gate on one side of the castle and crept down the rocks beneath it. There was a shadowed plateau overhung enough by another boulder to give them a little shelter. Val noticed that they'd already loaded it up with some cardboard.
Luis sat down and Lolli leaned against him, eyes going half-lidded. "I'll scrounge up some better supplies tomorrow," he said, leaning down to press his mouth to hers.
Ruth put one arm around Val and sighed. "I can't believe this."