Blade Phenomenon Read online

  Rickard tucked the gun into the waist of his pants and gave Demetrius another look.

  Yalé stepped toward Rickard now, and turned away from Demetrius, Allaire and Wanda. The two men talked quietly and kept their voices low enough that no one could hear. Allaire wondered if Yalé would be able to convince Rickard to take Demetrius with him.

  Demetrius hugged Wanda. “You understand why I want to go, right?” he asked her.

  “I guess,” she said. “I’m scared too.”

  “Allaire will be here with you,” Demetrius said.

  Allaire smiled at her friend. “Of course I will.” Since she wasn’t allowed to go to school, or to socialize outside of the factory building, Wanda was Allaire’s closest girlfriend by default.

  The three of them watched in silence as Yalé and Rickard had a tense conversation. Frederick’s appearance had unsettled them all, but the push-pull of Rickard’s obvious place as head of the family and Yalé’s ability to think logically, even in the face of this kind of turbulence, was playing out here dramatically. They even stepped further away as they became more animated to help keep their words private.

  A few moments later, the men walked back toward Demetrius, Wanda and Allaire.

  “I’ve had a change of heart,” Rickard said. “I’ve agreed not to go back alone.”

  Demetrius walked toward him, a relieved grin on his face. “Thank you, Father.”

  “No, Demetrius,” Rickard said. He looked at Allaire with something slightly more than his usual indifference to her. “She’s going, not you.”

  CHAPTER 13

  August 13, 1996 / january 22, 1990

  * * *

  Later that day

  Allaire was surprised by how hot it felt inside the tunnel. Demetrius had described it to her before, but there was no way to explain to someone that the hot metal felt, essentially, as warm as a person could possibly bear—if you were genetically disposed to bearing it at all. If you weren’t, you’d be dead within a short time. The utilitarian materials gave it the look of a sewer system without water. A relatively straight, sloping drainage pipe with old metal hand-grips, and dates etched into some of them.

  Rickard silently led the way, his backpack jiggling with each move. When Allaire asked him how he knew what year to find Frederick, he barked at her to move faster and keep quiet.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he snapped at her, urging her to move more quickly.

  Demetrius had pulled her aside, just before she left with Rickard, and begged her to make sure her father didn’t kill Frederick, his old friend and chaperone. But both of them knew that was an impossible thing to guarantee. Instead, she promised to do her best to leave him safe after they found and questioned him.

  When they exited the tunnel in 1990 about an hour and a half after entering, it was wintertime. She put on the baseball cap and gloves Rickard had instructed her to bring, and he did the same. While the concept of time weaving was nothing new to Allaire, actually having done it gave her a rush of excitement. For a few seconds, standing in the same alley between buildings where they’d entered the silk blot, Allaire enjoyed the feeling of the cold air on her bare arms. It didn’t take long, though, for her to start shivering.

  She followed Rickard down 36th Street, her teeth chattering. He was wearing a thin white business shirt and Allaire figured it wasn’t doing him much more good than her thin white tee was doing her. He walked ahead of her, paying no mind at all to whether she kept up.

  “How far are we going?” she asked, quickening her pace to match his. Moving a little faster helped her cope with the coldness. Again, he just kept moving with his head down, the brim of his cap mostly masking his face, and ignored her question.

  “It’s really cold,” she said. It would’ve been unlike him to take the hint, but she was cold enough to try anyway.

  He stopped and grabbed her by the shoulders, lowering his face toward her. It was the first time she could remember him making real eye contact with her in a long time. Maybe ever. “Do you know what happens if one of us sees ourselves here in 1990?” he asked her.

  Allaire shook her head ‘no.’

  “If you did, you’d keep up with me,” he said, walking again. “And you’d keep your mouth shut, too.”

  After they’d walked a bit further downtown into Chelsea, Rickard stopped in front of a building. He turned and looked up at the building across the street. “In here,” he said, trying to push the black metal door open.

  When the door wouldn’t budge, he took a step back and prepared to try to kick it open.

  “Wait,” Allaire said, pressing the call button for apartment 1D on the panel outside the door.

  “Who is it?” a man’s voice said, through the speaker.

  Now, she pressed 1E. No answer.

  Then, 1F. A few seconds later, they heard the buzzer sound and she pushed open the door. Rickard quickly led the way up the central staircase of the building to the sixth floor. Allaire was out of breath by the time they finished climbing.

  She saw him pull a small piece of paper out of his pocket and glance at it. “This way,” he said quietly.

  They stood in front of apartment 6G, and Rickard gave a look down the hall. Then, he reached up above the molding surrounding the door and felt around. He knocked a key down which made a pinging sound as it hit the tile floor in the hallway. Allaire picked it up, looked at Rickard and then put the key in the lock. She looked at him one last time and he nodded at her. She’d rarely seen Rickard with any look beyond one of total confidence. He was a cruel man, but one who was resolute in his convictions. Right now, though, he looked unsure, which concerned her.

  She pushed the door open slowly and saw that the apartment was furnished. Rickard stepped ahead of her, pulling a gun out from the waistband of his pants. She turned and locked the door. Instinctively, she held her hand over the knife holster on her side as she followed Rickard inside. They slowly walked from room to room through the apartment.

  Once they’d swept the apartment and determined that they were alone, Rickard put the gun back into his pants, and sat on a loveseat in the living room, right under one of the front windows of the apartment. Allaire looked down at the street below and watched the cars and taxis whiz by.

  “Who lives here?” she asked Rickard. The apartment looked like it belonged to someone elderly, all throw pillows and needlepoint framed on the wall. Still, Allaire felt a pang of jealousy. It felt like a home in here, even if it wasn’t like one she’d necessarily choose for herself.

  Rickard shrugged his shoulders and looked at a clock hanging above the TV.

  “Where’s Frederick?” Allaire asked. “Why are we meeting him here?”

  “Do me a favor,” Rickard said, pointing at a small desk and wooden chair next to the TV stand. “Take that chair and move it over there, close to the door. If someone comes in, you take care of them.”

  “You mean . . . ?”

  Rickard just looked at her with those cold eyes.

  “But . . . ”

  “Yalé and Demetrius weren’t making it up when they said you’ve been begging for a chance to time weave for years, right?” he asked her.

  She shook her head “no,” and again, he gestured toward the other side of the living room.

  After she moved her chair across the room, Allaire watched as Rickard pulled several pieces out of his backpack and started putting together a rifle. When she realized it was a rifle he was constructing, she got concerned about keeping her promise to Demetrius to try to keep Frederick safe.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  Rickard didn’t hesitate to shoot a condescending look her way. Even here, when she was his lone partner in a different time, there was no camaraderie. No friendliness. Nothing. He continued assembling the rifle.

  “You think pointing that thing at him is going to make him answer your questions?” Allaire asked. “We need to make him feel safe.”

  Rickard smiled and d
idn’t say anything. He looked up at the clock again, then he stood up and opened the window. He picked up the rifle and aimed it at the building across the street.

  Allaire stood up from her chair. “What are you doing?”

  “Stay there,” he said angrily, lining up his shot. “And shut up.”

  “But, you’re going to—”

  He turned and looked up at the clock again, considering something. Then he pulled the gun from the window. Allaire felt relieved. Perhaps he’s reconsidering, she thought to herself. But then, he pointed the gun at her. “I would have no problem explaining to my brother, and my son that something terrible happened, and that you didn’t make it back.”

  She stood frozen, afraid to take her eyes off of the gun.

  She’d spent the past seven years of her life trying to avoid the spitting mad glare she faced down now. Not to mention the gun. “You owe your life to me, little girl. You might not have the warm and fuzzy feelings for me that you have for the two of them, but if I ever changed my mind about keeping you around, none of us would even hesitate to take care of you the same way I’m going to take care of Frederick. Now watch the door.”

  Rickard turned back to the window, stood there for another couple of minutes, and then without further preamble, fired two shots in close succession.

  Allaire walked a few steps closer to the window. Her heart started pounding when she saw Rickard’s handiwork in the fifth-floor hallway of the apartment building across the street. An African-American man in a black suit lay face up, not moving in a pool of his own blood. It was Frederick. He used to work for the Seres and probably knew as much as she did about their secrets, if not more. Rickard gave one more look through the sight of his rifle before starting to quickly dismantle it. Allaire could see a man in the apartment holding his door open and standing over Frederick’s body.

  Before Rickard could even finish taking his rifle apart, there were police sirens outside. They both hit the deck to stay out of sight and tried to keep their heads under the window sill.

  A few seconds later, Rickard nudged Allaire’s arm. “Peek your head up slowly and tell me what you see,” he said.

  She pulled herself up toward the window sill.

  “Looks like two squad cars. Cops are in the middle of the street. Looks like they’re not sure what building to go into,” she said.

  “They probably just got a shots-fired call,” he said. “It won’t be long until they’re crawling all over both buildings. We need to get out.”

  “Can’t we just go into the silk blot from here?” she asked.

  Rickard shook his head as if he were dealing with a pest. “This building gets remodeled in two years. We could wind up stuck inside a wall, or weaving back into the middle of an elevator shaft. We need to get outside. Let’s go.”

  Allaire was scared of Rickard. She’d always been wary of him, but the way he talked to her today, and the way he coldly murdered Frederick, had given her new insight into his depths. She was equally scared of the police outside, though. She saw two more police cars roll up and heard sirens coming closer now. What if they were caught before they could escape into their silk blots? Would they be stuck forever?

  She followed Rickard to the stairwell, and they started down from the sixth floor. When they reached the landing on the third floor a few moments later, Allaire heard something. “Stop,” she whispered. “Listen.”

  They heard a door slam, and then voices. Rickard pulled out a second gun—an older looking .357 Magnum—and pointed it in front of them. As they slowly moved down the stairs, he held the gun at his side.

  Standing on another landing, between the third and second floors, Rickard craned his neck over the bannister to see if the next set of steps was clear.

  “Hey!” called out a voice. Rickard popped backward. Then leaned forward again and fired his gun three times.

  Allaire heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie, then a deep, panicked voice. “Officer down. Shots fired. Officer down. Shots fired, 424 West 23rd, front stairwell.” Then she heard footsteps coming up toward them.

  “The silk blot,” she whispered.

  Rickard looked at her and shook his head.

  She pointed down past him. “You shot a cop!”

  He started to step down the stairs again, then paused. He took the backpack off and began opening the zipper. She heard more footsteps coming toward them. “Here,” he said, handing her the bag.

  He raised his gun just as a bullet hit the wall behind them. Allaire opened the bag and felt around for the silk blot. But when she looked up a young police officer had his gun pointed at them.

  “Put down the weapon,” the officer shouted. “And the bag.” If he was even twenty-five, Allaire would’ve been surprised. He looked scared, while Rickard just looked blankly at him.

  Allaire jumped when she heard the shot, no idea who’d fired until the young cop stumbled back toward the wall, holding his shoulder. His gun fell to the ground. She couldn’t believe what was happening. The bodies were piling up, and Allaire found herself in the middle of something that was turning out vastly different than expected.

  “Come on,” Rickard said to her, startling Allaire out of her frozen response to the immediate threat. She followed him, the backpack hanging off one of her shoulders, because she didn’t know what else to do.

  Rickard passed the young cop first. He was still doubled over holding his shoulder. But as Allaire passed right behind Rickard, the cop reached out for her and grabbed her shirt, pulling her down to the ground. Rickard grabbed the bag as it slid off her arm and he continued down the stairs.

  The cop knelt over her, his shirt a mix of crimson and blue now. He was actively bleeding from the bullet hole in his shoulder. He delivered a hard punch to her face with his uninjured arm. He moved his leg over hers and pinned her beneath him. “You shot my partner,” he screamed, and then punched her again. He tried to grab her wrists with his blood-slicked hands and tried to turn her over beneath him. She knew time was running out. If Rickard hadn’t stuck around to help her, he certainly wasn’t going to wait for her before getting into the silk blot.

  Allaire slid her gloved hand away and grabbed at the officer’s shoulder. She stuck both thumbs inside the bullet hole and pressed as hard as she could. He shot off of her like a rocket and crumbled backward, holding his shoulder. Allaire pulled herself to her feet with the bannister, grabbed his gun off the floor and stepped around him.

  She ran down the next flight of stairs. “Rickard!” she yelled, hoping he was still there. “Wait!”

  As she reached the ground floor of the building, she bumped right into a tall, skinny police officer making his way upstairs. He saw the gun in her hand and put her in a chokehold, turning her toward the bottom of the stairs. He twisted her wrist until the gun dropped to the ground. She grabbed at the cop’s arm, trying to get it off of her neck, and saw Rickard crouched in an alcove off to the side of the building lobby. He was rooting around in the backpack. They made eye contact and then he looked away. She knew he had no intention of waiting for her.

  “Real slow,” the officer said to Allaire, without letting up on the chokehold, “bring your hands behind your back so I can cuff them.”

  She did as she was told and slid her hands, off of his arm and down her sides. She brought her left hand all the way in back of her, and grabbed the officer’s belt buckle.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Let go—”

  She’d gotten out of a chokehold from Demetrius hundreds of times, and his arms were twice the size of this cop’s. She ducked down and twisted, keeping him close with the hold on his belt. Then she grabbed her blade with her right arm, and twisted the cop around so now she was in back of him. She could’ve slashed his jugular vein right then.

  She pushed him toward the door to the apartment building. “Don’t turn around,” she said to him. “Go!”

  The officer took one step toward the building exit, then turned back to her and drew h
is gun. She ran at him, and before he could aim his gun, she brought her knife up to the cop’s long neck, sliding the serrated blade through the soft flesh covering his carotid artery. He collapsed within seconds, enough blood spurting out that she could hear it hit the ground next to her feet. She opened her arms and let him fall to the ground with a thud.

  When Allaire looked back at Rickard, his entire upper body was in the silk blot. She bolted toward him, sliding across the slick floor into his leg. She stood up, angling her head into the silk blot and seconds later, joined Rickard in the tunnel.

  She sat in the hot tunnel trying to catch her breath. “You were going to leave me!” she screamed.

  Rickard just sat against the wall of the tunnel and nodded.

  “Asshole,” she said. “I’m glad I got to see you today for who you really are.”

  He just looked at her with a self-satisfied look. “Grow up. You wanted this.”

  “I didn’t want this!” she said, breaking down into tears. “I killed that officer!”

  Rickard shrugged. “In the long run, it’s probably a good—”

  She moved close to him and held the blade up to his neck now. “Don’t you even dare finish that thought.”

  “I shouldn’t have brought you,” he said. “I knew you were too weak.”

  She held the blade against his neck. They’d never bonded like she had with Demetrius and Yalé. Not even close. After all these years, she still walked on eggshells around him. She’d seen him be cruel and cutting. But never like today. She didn’t know if she could go back to the same life, and pretend that she wasn’t sharing a roof with a cold-blooded killer. But where would she go? Quite literally, she had no one else in the world. Plus, she herself was a killer now, too.

  “If you’ve bothered to threaten,” he said, “you should be able to follow through. Didn’t Demetrius teach you that? Dropping that cop was payment, Allaire. Payment for us taking you in, feeding you, giving your life some purpose. Where else would you have gone?”