27

NO, YOU DO THE CAVITY SEARCH

Luis Rodriguez stopped at the edge of the platform, right at the mouth of the subway tunnel. His face was rigid and his chest was moving up and down a little too rapidly.

“I’m not getting any closer than this.”

Luke Pritchett had never worked with Luis before, but any Templar who became a transit cop in New York City wasn’t likely to frighten easily. It was commonly held wisdom among knights that any lay sergeant who worked the subways had a strong heart, and any lay sergeant who worked the sewers had a strong stomach. The city only got worse the farther down you went. For Luis to resist his geas and embarrass himself like this, he must have been truly terrified.

Luke looked at his partner, Matt Petrucelli. The big paladin shrugged. Like most of Matt’s motions, the shrug seemed more expressive for coming off a six-foot-six frame. That was good because Matt didn’t like to talk much. It was bad because Luke was six feet one and spent most of his life feeling short. “All right,” Luke said kindly, and left it at that.

The two warrior priests proceeded down into the tunnel, stepping around a forest of iron girders that had been propped between the ground and ceiling like mine supports. They carefully avoided the third rail of the subway tracks even though they had been assured that it had been turned off. Luke didn’t know what pretext was being used to shut the tunnel down, or how high up the Templars’ operative in the Transit Authority was. All he knew was that a lot of knights were pouring into New York City from the surrounding states, and that he and Matt had been told to hurry it up. Few things generated as much pressure and public distress in New York City as having modes of transport disrupted.

At least the tunnel was fairly well lit. Lamps burning sacramental oils were hung about the tunnel, and blocks of dry ice made out of frozen holy water were coating the floor with a roiling mist. If those precautions weren’t having any effect, Luke privately suspected that any exorcisms he and Matt performed wouldn’t do much good either, but he kept those doubts to himself.

Even knowing what to expect, Luke’s heartbeat speeded up when he spotted the protrusions. Roughly the size of steamer trunks, grey-white and emerging from both the ground and ceiling, the irregularities looked like nothing so much as the tips of teeth coming in.

The mouth of the subway tunnel was growing fangs.