Page 68

He made it to a delivery van next, which provided his first real cover, then a mini-van, a tiny city car, a limousine, then a row of six or seven more pickups.

He knew where he was.

He used to drive through the Cauldron almost daily, taking the center drive, sometimes both ways, but at least in one direction, to or from his home in Washington Heights. It was the fastest way to reach the vampire ghetto from downtown and vice versa.

He’d tell himself that’s why he did it, to save time.

And that was true, as far as it went––the road through the Cauldron wasn’t just faster, it was exponentially faster than any other route open to Nick––but he strongly suspected he’d often gone that way because he was bored.

He’d meet roadblocks, get shot at, sometimes even get in drag races with locals, who would come out in their own vehicles to try and steal Nick’s.

As a result, Nick had a high degree of familiarity with the parts of the Cauldron near the main road, and especially the parts nearest to the North and South Gates.

Here, by the North Gate, a near-mile of junked cars began on the east side of the Devil’s Cauldron, not far from the set of three locks that opened and closed to authorized traffic. The North Gate eventually led out to 113th Street, which marked the lowest edge of Washington Heights. Some of these cars had likely be left here by refugees right after the war.

The scrapyard then grew over time as more and more of the old vehicles failed.

Many of these antiques had been manufactured more than a century ago. Missing and used-up parts could maybe be 3D-printed, but it was easier and more economical, even for people living inside the Cauldron, to simply steal a car from the other side of the wall.

Now they left cars outside the walls when they were finished with them, after stripping them for parts, of course. Sometimes they dissolved them in acid or other corrosives.

But the original, ancient junkyard remained, like a memorial to times past.

Or a graveyard, perhaps.

Nick continued to move stiffly and slowly through the piled-up corpses of ancient cars. He listened intently as he went, and could still make out the voices he’d heard when he first opened his eyes. He picked out the individual timbres and accents of the two H.R.A. fucks who’d been shooting at him outside.

He heard a few other voices with them now, as well.

He couldn’t tell if they were hybrid or human. Theysmelledhuman, but they might be wearing pheromones like the first two.

Nick definitely wasn’t going to venture out far enough to find out, or even get a good look at any of them.

He didn’t hear Morley.

He didn’t hear Charlie, either.

Not that he expected to.

Still, he hoped like hell they weren’t in the back of a windowless van on the other side of that wall. He hoped they hadn’t done anything crazy or stupid, but had taken Charlie straight to the hospital after those H.R.A. clowns shot her in the leg with a harpoon.

He hoped the hybrids wouldn’t try to prosecute Morley for telling Nick to run.

Morley was smart enough to say he hadn’t believed they were law enforcement and that Nick had been subjected to death threats and attempted kidnappings before(and that’s a fucking understatement,Nick’s mind muttered in annoyance).

The H.R.A. likely wouldn’t believe him. They might decide to give him a hard time even if they did believe him, just to make a point, or even throw him in a cell if they were feeling particularly vindictive.

Acharya would probably try to protect him.

Nick couldn’t count on that, but he hoped it was true.

He still didn’t even know what this was about, not precisely.

But he couldn’t think about that yet.

Whoever these fuckers were, they were serious.

Nick counted at least six agents out on the main road that cut through the center of the militarized zone. They’d likely have more outside the wall.