Descendant

  Mason opened her mouth to answer, then paused. She recognized the voice now beyond a shadow of a doubt. But while she trusted her ears to identify the source, she didn’t necessarily trust the source itself. Heimdall masquerading as her mother had seen to that. But she definitely recognized those gruff tones. She’d spent far too many hours getting barked at by them on the fencing piste not to.

  “It’s Toby,” she mouthed to Fennrys silently.

  “Maybe,” he mouthed back, equally wary.

  “Mason . . . ,” the voice called out again. “It’s Toby Fortier. If you can hear me, I’m here to help.”

  Mason drew a deep breath and glanced back over her shoulder at Fennrys. It was clear he had no more idea than she did what her fencing instructor was doing out in a boat in the middle of the East River at night, off the shores of North Brother Island, looking for her. Fennrys narrowed his eyes and stared hard into the darkness. Mason followed his gaze, and then she saw it: an inflatable type of boat gliding across the water’s surface. She vaguely recalled from a documentary she’d once seen that the boat was called a Zodiac, and it was a preferred mode of transport for marine researchers and Navy SEALs. Then she remembered something that she wasn’t really supposed to know. Toby Fortier used to be a SEAL.

  The matte-black rubber craft was almost invisible in the darkness, and so was its pilot—Mason could only just make out a figure behind the handheld search lamp, clothed in black and wearing a black watch cap. She opened her mouth to call out to him, but Fennrys put a hand on her arm and a finger to his lips, gesturing for her to remain silent. Then he stepped around her and walked out toward the water, his boots crunching loudly on the gravel as he strolled casually, not attempting to hide his presence.

  “Mason?” Toby called, and the beam of light swept up from Fennrys’s feet to his face.

  Fennrys put a hand up in front of his face to shadow his eyes and squinted into the spotlight. “Evening, Coach,” he said.

  “Well,” Toby said, idling the motor. “You are not the first person I expected to find here, I gotta say.”

  Fennrys shrugged. “The feeling is strangely mutual.”

  Toby cocked his head to one side, and Mason could see the glint of his dark eyes as the moon made a sudden, brief appearance through a hole in the racing clouds. “I thought you were out of commission. What are you doing out here, son?” Toby asked.

  “Picnic. You?”

  “Boat cruise.”

  “I see.” Fennrys paused for a moment and then asked, “What’s your boot size, Coach?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Boot size. Yours. What is it?” Fennrys glanced over his shoulder to where Mason was peeking out from around the bushes. She had one hand clamped over her mouth to keep from laughing at the way Fennrys had chosen to confirm Toby’s identity. Seeing as how Fenn—who’d appeared out of nowhere on the night of the raging zombie storm without the benefit of clothing or footwear and thus had been obliged to steal Toby’s boots as the fencing master slept—knew exactly what size those clodhoppers were.

  There was a pause out on the water.

  And then the man in the boat chuckled and said, “I wear a twelve wide in combat boots, which you damned well know. Thanks for returning them—next time, run ’em through a shoeshine stand, will you?”

  Mason exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing out here in this boat,” Toby said, and Mason could almost hear the wry smile on his face.

  “It had crossed my mind,” Fennrys said.

  “You saved my kids the night of that storm.” Toby’s voice was serious and quiet. “You saved me. Me, I don’t care about so much. But I hate wasted potential, and my fighters are exactly that. They’re also my sacred charges.” Mason could see him shaking his head. “I don’t take particularly well to having my ass kicked by monsters when I’m trying to do my job. And I don’t like having to rely on someone else to kick monster ass back on my behalf. But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t repay debts. I do.”

  “That’s good to know.” Fennrys crossed his arms over his chest. “But you weren’t expecting to find me here, Coach. You just said so yourself.”

  “That’s true. But I thought you should know that before I tell you what I am doing here. Because that reasoning is something that impacts upon my decisions here.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I assume Mason’s with you?”

  “I’m right here, Toby,” she said, stepping out from behind the trees and walking up to stand beside Fennrys.

  They both heard Toby sigh with relief and murmur, “Thank the gods. . . .”

  Mason and Fennrys exchanged a glance at Toby’s particular word choice. Fennrys raised an eyebrow, and Mason shrugged.

  “I’m going to beach the Zodiac. You two can climb onboard, and we’ll get out of here.”

  “We three,” Mason corrected him. “There’s three of us here.”

  “Who else is—oh . . .” Toby fell silent as Rafe stalked out of the darkness to stand beside Mason, and the beam from the searchlight illuminated his decidedly inhuman form. Which Toby clearly recognized immediately. “Humble greetings, mighty Lord of Aaru, Protector of the Dead,” he said, with a respectful bow of his head. “I offer myself in service to you.”

  “Gee,” Rafe said drily. “Thanks. ’Cause it just so happens I’m fresh out of boatmen.”

  Mason and Fennrys exchanged another glance as the fencing master maneuvered the flat-bottomed boat up onto the ragged little beach, and Fennrys helped steady Mason as she climbed into the boat.

  “The good news is,” Toby said to Mason as Fennrys handed her off to him, “the fact that you’re still alive is one less thing your father will want to kill me over.”

  Mason went stiff and instantly cold at the mention of Gunnar Starling.

  “The bad news is,” Toby continued ruefully, “he’ll still want to kill me anyway over what I’m about to do.”

  “And that is?” Fennrys asked warily.

  “Not take you and Mason directly to him. Now get in.”

  Fennrys climbed over the side of the boat, followed by Rafe, who shoved them off, and Toby reversed the engine, then pointed the boat downstream and steered westward. No one spoke for a few minutes as they glided across the black expanse of water. Downriver, banks of portable floodlights had been trucked onto the two severed ends of the Hell Gate Bridge, illuminating the wreckage in a wash of white light that rendered the twisted metal girders in stark black silhouette. The whole thing looked like some kind of abstract sculpture and was strangely beautiful.

  And they were passing directly beneath it.

  There were police and coast guard boats patrolling the waters of the Hell Gate Strait on either side of them and workers clearing debris above, but Toby kept the Zodiac’s engine purring at just barely over an idle, and the little black craft slipped past utterly unnoticed. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that Fennrys had, for the duration of the ride, been clutching the iron medallion at his throat and murmuring. Mason figured he was drawing on some of the power of the charm’s Faerie magick to keep them hidden as they swept past the patrolling boats.

  A look of understanding had passed between him and Rafe as he’d begun to cast the veiling spell. The ancient god seemed grateful and more than willing to let Fennrys do some of the arcane “heavy lifting.” The trip through the Between, Aken’s death, and the ritual Rafe had performed for him . . . it all seemed to have taken a bit of a toll on the Jackal God. He sat in the bow of the boat, shoulders slumped and head hanging. His dreadlocks swept forward, curtaining his face.

  When they were well past the Hell Gate, Fennrys sat back and looked over at Toby, who sat in the stern, steering the Zodiac. “Hey, Coach,” he called out softly. “Earlier, you said you thought I was out of commission. What exactly would have led you to that conclusion?”

  “Oh, I
don’t know.” Toby took a sip from the travel mug that was his constant companion and wiped the corner of his mouth on the back of his hand. He kept his voice low, and his eyes never left the river in front of them. “Maybe it was the bullet through the shoulder. Or the cartwheel off the train. Or, y’know”—he pointed with the mug—“the bridge exploding while you were still on it.”

  “You know all about our little train trip then,” Fennrys said.

  “Of course I do.” Toby grunted. “I was driving the train.”

  Mason stared at Toby, her mouth drifting open. She cast her mind back to the fencing tournament she’d so spectacularly crashed and burned in . . . and tried to remember what Toby had said to her. How he’d dealt with it. And then she remembered . . . Toby hadn’t been there.

  “You missed the competition,” she murmured, shaking her head in disbelief that she hadn’t, at the time, even noticed. How screwed up was that? “It was for the Nationals and you missed it.”

  Toby blinked at her, as if startled by the accusation leveled at him. “I know, Mase . . . I’m sorry. You didn’t get my note?”

  She shook her head, mute. That whole evening—how long ago had it been now? a few hours? days?—seemed like a kind of fever dream. She’d been so thrown by her confrontation with Calum, by everything, even though she’d thought she’d had a handle on it all. But now, in hindsight, it seemed almost as if the entire thing had been staged to catch Mason at her most vulnerable. Like Fate had stepped in to mess her up. She wondered . . . if Toby had been there, would she have so totally blown the competition? Stormed out afterward and right into Rory’s trap? Maybe she never would have wound up on that train in the first place. The train that Toby had been operating . . .

  What. The. Hell . . .

  Mason felt a stab of cold in her gut. “Wait. If you were driving the train that night—but—that would mean—”

  “That I work for your father, Mason.” Toby’s gaze was steady and calm as he looked at her. “Yeah. I do. Sort of. And Gunnar damn well ordered me to be on duty that night. In an ‘offer I couldn’t refuse’ kind of way.” He shook his head. “You know how proud I am of you, Mase, and you know how badly I wanted to be there. For the team, but mostly for you. I wanted to see you win.”

  “I didn’t. I lost.” The dull hurt of her failure had faded into the background with everything that had happened since, but sharpened suddenly to a new stab of pain at the memory. “I imploded.”

  “I’m sorry.” Toby’s eyes never left her face. “And I’m still proud of you.”

  Mason felt a corner of her lip curl. “Are you sure you’re really Toby Fortier?”

  “Let’s see . . . you ever even think of performing that badly again, Starling, and I will bench your lame ass for life.” He grinned and then reached over and patted her reassuringly on the knee.

  “Okay, Coach.” Mason blinked back a sudden sting of tears.

  Fennrys sat back, letting the two of them share the moment. Then he leaned forward slightly and cleared his throat. “So, you work for Gunnar Starling? And we just got in a boat with you?”

  As he asked the questions, Mason saw Fenn’s fingers twitch in the direction of the long dagger he carried. Toby saw it, too, but he didn’t flinch.

  “That’s right,” he said, nodding. “What Gunnar doesn’t know—at least, I sincerely hope he doesn’t know—is that he’s not the only one I work for.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Rafe said with sour mirth from where he still sat hunched on the bow bench seat. “Daria Aristarchos?”

  “No.” Toby grimaced in distaste. “Not directly. I can’t stand the woman, to be honest. But her ends and mine are sometimes . . . in agreement. Much as yours are, I would imagine, lord. I just don’t necessarily approve of her methods. Look, my primary goal is the safety of my charges. The students at the academy. That’s what I signed on to do. Keep them—keep you—safe. For a while, working for Gunnar Starling on the side seemed like a good way to help make that happen.”

  “Know thine enemy?” Mason said drily. She felt a twinge in her heart at those words.

  “Until recently, I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was,” Toby said quietly. “Gunnar seemed like he’d pretty much abandoned the whole idea of a Norse apocalypse after your mother died, and I saw that as being a step forward for him. In some ways, Mason, I actually believe in the same things as your father. At least Gunnar believes in free will. More so than Daria and her ilk. He believes that humanity has done what it’s done to itself, without much in the way of interference from the gods—for better or worse—and that we get what we deserve. The other Gosforth families—some of them—actually want to not only keep the memory of their gods alive, but bring them back into the world. So that humanity could one day worship them again.”

  “You know that Cal’s dead, right?” Mason said quietly.

  Toby, pale in the scattered moonlight, went even paler. He swore softly under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “No. I didn’t know.”

  Fennrys put an arm around Mason’s shoulders and did her the kindness of telling Toby for her what had happened. Mason could feel her muscles shivering beneath his arm as she struggled not to cry for Cal again.

  The shadow of the Triborough Bridge cast them into a deeper darkness as they passed beneath it. Mason could hear the honking of car horns and the distant murmur of raised voices. There seemed to be a traffic backup of some kind, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about something so mundane as that just in that moment.

  Toby angled the craft around the southernmost point of Wards Island and aimed it toward the shores of Manhattan, revving the engine so the rubber boat surged forward.

  “There’s a ferry terminal and an industrial shipping jetty around East Ninetieth Street,” he said. “I can tie up the boat and we can flag a cab to take you somewhere safe from there.”

  “You know,” Mason said, trying hard to reconcile her suddenly radically expanded view of her coach, “I never would have thought you were the kind of guy to give all that much credence to gods and goddesses, Toby.”

  “My views on gods and goddesses are . . . complicated, Mase.” The fencing master’s placid expression shifted, his gaze clouding. “That’s kind of what happens when you actually fall in love with one—and they fall in love back.”

  Mason blinked at him, speechless.

  Toby shook his head and twisted the throttle on the outboard. “It’s a really long story, kiddo, and it’ll have to wait.” He grunted and torqued the steering handle, gunning the engine. “It seems we’re going to have a bit of a fight on our hands making landfall. . . .”

  Toby had the nose of the inflatable boat pointed toward the city, but even though he was running the outboard motor now at top speed, it seemed as though they were making little to no headway—almost as if some invisible force was pushing them back. The current began to carry them rapidly downstream. Mason noticed that it was getting harder and harder to discern individual buildings on the Upper East Side.

  The fog they’d seen earlier, gathering near North Brother Island, seemed to have moved off westward, as if drawn there by some kind of magnet. On the eastern bank of the river, the lights of Queens still shone brightly, unobscured, but all around Manhattan, a shimmering, silver-gray fog barrier was rising up from the surface of the water to hang like the fifty-foot-high battlements of a medieval fortress.

  An impassable barrier between the boat and the city.

  “I’m starting to understand what you meant when you said you didn’t trust fog, Rafe . . . ,” Mason said.

  She eyed the fog bank piling up around Manhattan with suspicion. But then she noticed something even more worrying. A pale shape—no, shapes—moving just below the surface of the dark water, alongside the Zodiac.

  Mason opened her mouth to warn her companions, but suddenly, in spite of all Toby’s best efforts to steer, the boat began rotating in a slow circle, as if caught in an unseen whirlpool.

&nbs
p; The little craft heaved up out of the water as something huge and heavy hit one of the float chambers from below. Toby was thrown backward, and the engine sputtered and threatened to stall as he clutched the rope handholds on the side of the boat, managing somehow not to tumble into the water.

  A good thing, too, Mason thought, frantically grabbing for her own rope. Because not far off the port side of the boat, one of Cal’s mer-girls rose up out of the water in a plume of spray. Her mouth was open wide in savage song, showing her teeth, which were like long white knives. In a flash, the vicious sea maid had closed the distance to the Zodiac and was trying to scrabble her way up over the side with her grasping, talon-tipped webbed hands. Without a second thought, Mason hauled off and kicked the creature in the head as hard as she could. The heel of her boot connected with a loud crack, and the nymph squealed in pain and rage and disappeared back down below the surface.

  Suddenly, she surged back out of the water, snarling and thrashing, blood running from the side of her mouth, and this time Mason scrambled out of the way as Fennrys shouted for her to move. Wielding an oar like a club, he bashed the creature repeatedly over her green-haired head, punctuating his blows with angry words that echoed Mason’s sentiment: “Why . . . does everything . . . that lives . . . in these rivers . . . have fangs?”

  On the other side of the boat, Rafe picked up a gas can and smashed it down on another of the things trying to scrabble over the pontoon and into the boat. “People keep flushing expired meds down the toilet,” he said, grunting with exertion. “All that stuff was bound to have adverse effects on the marine life, eventually.”

  “You’re a god!” Mason called to Rafe as the surface of the river boiled with thrashing movement. “Can’t you do something?”

  “I’m a desert god!” he called back. “Water-based magick is a little beyond me!”

  Still, he had a pretty good swing, and between Mason’s boot heel, Fenn’s devastating oar wielding, and Rafe’s gas-can smashing, their assailants seemed wary about approaching again. For a long moment, everything went still. The little rubber boat still spun in a lazy circle, but the river seemed suddenly calm and empty. As silently as she could, Mason loosened her rapier in its sheath and prepared to draw.