But the sight didn't make me flinch - the rats smelled familiar and safe, like Zombie sleeping warm on my chest.
The scent led me to a jagged, gaping hole in the tunnel wall, big enough to walk into, just like the cavity where Minerva and I had first kissed. It led away into pitch-blackness, its sides glistening. The rats swirled around me.
I could smell danger now, but I didn't want to run. My blood was pulsing, my whole body readying for a fight. I listened for a moment and knew instinctively that the hole was empty, though something had passed this way.
I reached out to touch the broken granite, and a dark gunk as thick as honey came off on my fingers. Like the black water, it shimmered for a moment on my skin, then faded into the air.
But its scent left behind a word in my mind... enemy. Just like Min always said: I call the enemy when I sing.
The ground rumbled underfoot, and the rats began to squeak.
I started running down the subway tunnel, feet crunching on gravel, the rats following, anger rippling across my skin. My tongue ran along my teeth, feeling every point. My whole body was crying out to fight this thing.
Then all at once I heard it, smelled it, saw it coming toward me...
A form moved against the darkness, shapeless except for the tendrils whipping out to grasp the tunnel's support columns. It dragged itself toward me - without legs, with way too many arms.
I staggered to a halt, a nervous garlic burp clearing my head for a few seconds. I realized how big it was - like a whole subway car rolling loose - and how unarmed I was...
But then the thing inside me tightened its grip on my spine, flooding me with anger. I pulled the Stratocaster from its case and held its neck with both hands, bringing it over one shoulder like an ax. Steel strings and golden pickups flashed in the darkness, and suddenly the beautiful instrument was nothing but a weapon, a hunk of wood for smashing things.
The rats flowed around me, scrambling up the walls and columns.
The thing refused to take any shape in the darkness, but it was heading toward me faster now, its body spitting out gravel to both sides. It lashed at the dangling subway work lights, popping them one by one as it grew closer, like a rolling cloud of smoke bringing darkness.
Then something glimmered wetly at its center, an open maw ringed with teeth like long knives - and me with an electric guitar. Some small, rational part of my mind knew that I was very, very screwed...
It was only twenty yards away. I swung the Stratocaster across myself; its weight made my feet stumble.
Ten yards...
Suddenly human figures shot past me out of the darkness, meeting the creature head on. Bright metal weapons flashed, and the monster's screech echoed down the tunnel. Someone knocked me to one side and pinned me against the wall, holding me there as the beast streamed past. Cylinders of flesh sprouted from its length, grasping the steel columns around us, ending in sharp-toothed mouths that gnashed wetly. Human screams and flying gravel and the shriek of rats filled the air around us.
And then it was gone, sucking the air behind it like a passing subway train.
The woman who'd shoved me against the wall let go, and I stumbled back onto the tracks. The monstrous white bulk was receding into the darkness, leaving a trail of glistening black water. The dark figures and a stream of rats pursued it. Weapons flickered like subway sparks.
I stood there, panting and clutching the Strat like I was going to hit something with it. Then the creature slipped out of sight, disappearing into the hole I'd found, like a long, pale tongue flickering into a mouth.
The hunters followed, and the tunnel was suddenly empty, except for me, a few hundred crushed rats, and the woman.
I blinked at her. She was a little older than me, with a jet-black fringe of bangs over brown eyes, a scuffed leather jacket and cargo pants with stuffed-full pockets.
She eyed the guitar in my hands. "Can you talk?"
"Talk?" I stood there for another moment, stunned and shaking.
"As in converse, dude. Or are you crazy already?"
"Um..." I lowered the Strat. "I don't think so."
She snorted. "Yeah, right. So, like, dude, are you trying to get yourself killed?"
She led me to an abandoned subway stop farther up the tracks, a darkened ghost station. The stairways were boarded over, the token booth trashed, but the graffiti-covered platform was abuzz with hunters regrouping after the chase. They slipped up from the tracks, as graceful as the dark figures climbing down the fire escape that night I'd met Pearl.
Angels was what Luz called the people in the struggle. But I'd never figured on angels carrying backpacks and walkie-talkies.
"Easy with that thing," the woman who'd saved me said. "We're all friends here."
"What?... Oh, sorry." I was still clutching the Stratocaster like a weapon. The shoulder strap dangled from one end, so I slung the guitar over my back.
Confusion was finally setting in. Had I really just seen a giant monster? And wanted to fight it?
I looked at her. "Um... who are you?"
"I'm Lace, short for Lacey. You?"
"Moz."
"You can say your own name? Not bad."
"I can do what?"
Instead of answering, she pulled a tiny flashlight from a pocket and shone it in my eyes. The light was blinding.
"Ouch! What are you doing?"
She leaned closer, sniffing at my breath. "Garlic? Clever boy."
A guy's voice came from behind me. "Positive? Or just some wack-job?"
"Definitely a peep, Cal. But a self-medicator, by the looks of it."
"Another one?" Cal said. His accent sounded southern. "That's the third this week."
Tracers from the flashlight still streaked my vision, but I could see Lace's silhouette shrug. "Well, garlic is in all the folklore. Who told you to eat that stuff, Moz?"
I blinked. "Um, this woman called Luz."
"A doctor? A faith healer?"
"She's, uh..." What was Min's word? "An esoterica?"
"What the hell's that?" Cal said. My vision returning, I noticed he was wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt under his leather jacket, which seemed weirdly out of place.
"Probably something esoteric," Lace said.
I shook my head. I'd never met Luz face-to-face. "She's a healer. Some kind of Catholic, I guess. She uses tea and stuff."
"Amateur hour," Lace said in a singsong voice. "So, Moz, how long have you had an appetite for rare meat?"