Chapter Ten

Kierse headed out of Five Points and back onto the Manhattan streets. She needed to be out of the West Village and back uptown, but knowing the bus and subway routes wasn't enough anymore.

Even though New York was beginning to turn around, transportation was a luxury. She was still regretting her hasty taxi last night. If there had been any other option, she would have taken it. The buses ran semi-regularly, if you were lucky enough to be on their route, but the subway was the better bet. It hadn't always been safe before the collapse, back when police cared to patrol the city. Now, it was a world of its own. Dangerous and deadly and full of gangs... and monsters. The subway was half the reason she left the house every night with a gun.

Kierse would have loved to choose the bus, but Nate had recommended Dreadlord-controlled subway entrances. She could have taken the 1 to the Upper West Side, but she needed a minute to figure out her move before she went back to Graves. Instead, she headed north to 6th and 14th to catch the more familiar F train, straight up to Midtown.

She tensed her shoulders as she descended into the subway. Lights flickered overhead, barely illuminating the gloom. Another consequence of monsters in the public eye were the trolls who managed the subway entrances. They associated with certain gangs and forced tolls on unsuspecting victims. In a way, it was paying to cross a bridge.

"Thad," she said with a head nod as she approached the troll at this stop.

He grunted. She forced herself not to shiver at the sight of a full-size troll. He was almost double her height, with meaty shoulders and clubs for arms. His bulky head rested nearly flat on his shoulders, and his eyes were small and beady. The cruel twist of his lips and the shine in his black eyes said he'd rather crush her than allow her access. But with the Treaty in place, so long as she paid her toll, all would be well. She hoped.

"Nate said to let me pass," Kierse told him, revealing the pin of a crescent moon with five stars that revealed her association with the Dreadlords.

He stood to his considerable height. "You still have to pay the price."

She hated the ritual, hated having to pay a toll to use a facility that already charged for usage. But it was easier than shooting her way through, which she had done before when she'd stumbled into the wrong station run by the wrong monsters in the East Village.

Nate had assured her that she wouldn't have to pay, but she wasn't about to fight a troll to find out if he was right. She fished out a five and passed it to him. She'd paid way more at other stops and hoped that he wouldn't ask for more.

He took a minute to make sure it was what he wanted. Trolls weren't that intelligent. The payments were more about power than the money itself. Finally, Thad pocketed the cash and nodded her into the depths below. She already had a MetroCard handy and hopped on the next F train north. She took the first available seat, carefully bolstered on either side by other humans who wanted nothing to do with her. At the last second, a shifter entered with a goblin. They were both packing and almost rippled with malice. Everyone immediately turned their attention elsewhere, and Kierse followed suit. She had enough problems as it was.

The reason she loved the F train was that it was the most direct route to Midtown without any of the more... unsavory stops. It was an unwritten rule to avoid the Times Square stop on the 1. Tourists were still stupid enough to do it, but Kierse always took another stop over and hoofed it if she had to go nearby. She equally rejected the 4, 5, or 6 north even though they were sometimes faster. Stopping at Grand Central was just asking for trouble. She shivered even thinking of it.

No, the F was the safest. And when she reemerged into the first rays of daylight on 57th Street a half hour later, she was glad to leave the subway behind her. Though she had been uptown last night, the contrast was worse during the day. The entire world was bright and vibrant, with skyscrapers of glass, open restaurants without bars on the windows, mothers pushing their babies in strollers, businesses with bright signs beckoning pedestrians inside, and not a seedy character in sight. Money could buy happiness.

Kierse had to stuff her hands in her jacket pockets to keep her thieving habit at bay. It was hard to ignore the naive little lambs wandering the streets wide-eyed who were just begging to be pickpocketed. But cops actually patrolled these streets, and she'd had enough trouble for one day.

Instead, she headed into the Upper East Side and straight to her favorite Jewish bakery. It had been a staple in its prime Madison Avenue location for decades. Even during the Monster War, it had only closed for a few months. After paying for her treats, she took the paper package filled with black-and-white cookies, rugelach, and cinnamon babka and headed out onto the busy streets. She rolled her eyes at the tea shop full of monsters reminiscing about the good old days. Wealthy women had been fond of this tea shop with little finger sandwiches and desserts before the war. That was when they'd found out that a succubus had used it as a feeding ground. Kierse pulled out a cookie and bit into it as she crossed to the Met.

She dropped onto the Met steps and stared up at the famed statue of Coraline LeMort as she ate her breakfast. Coraline stood on a pedestal with her shoulders pushed back and chin in the air. Her eyes were clear as day, looking toward a future she never was able to see but had visualized as she fought for monster unity even before humans knew about their existence. Kierse had always wondered what Coraline would have thought of her death starting the Monster War. Would she be disappointed? Or just unsurprised?

She'd never know, of course, because they'd killed her—and everything had changed.

The beautiful Met steps could fool anyone into thinking that the world was back to how it had been before the war. That Coraline's death hadn't been in vain. But Kierse had a map of the city in her mind, and it didn't just show buildings—it showed territories. The human gangs that had survived the war by banding together. Roulettes on the Lower East buttressed against their biggest competition, the Jackals in Nolita. There were half a dozen other gangs spanning the city. And then there were bigger players: the Gents in the East Village, the Italian mafia in Little Italy, and the Druids in Brooklyn.

Worse yet was monster territory, which had mostly been shored up since the war but was sometimes still disputed and could be catastrophic for humans. The largest vampire clan on the Upper East and Nate's competing wolf pack on the West Village, to name a few. Not to mention the disputed territories like Times Square.

But at least those entities abided by the Monster Treaty. There were other monsters who didn't believe that they should be subjected to the humans they fed off of. Some factions were vocal, some just silently continued as if the Treaty had never been signed, and the worst of them had organized—the Men of Valor.

Kierse had heard whispers of the Men of Valor for years before they took Torra. The only positive thing she could say about the bloodthirsty and deranged organization was that despite the word "men" in the title, they didn't limit their members solely to that gender. Just... terrible monsters who wanted to kill all humans. Delightful.

She swallowed as she stared up at Coraline LeMort and wondered if this all would have been different. If she had survived and the war had never started, would Kierse still have her girlfriend?

She tossed her bag into a trash can, still reminiscing about Torra, as she strode into Central Park. As snow gently fell, she moved down the leaf-strewn walkways and passed the green-roofed Boathouse until she came upon Bethesda Fountain. The angel at the center of the famous fountain looked down upon her subjects. Kierse had always imagined her judging them for their humanity.

Kierse wouldn't blame her. The only person Kierse really held responsible for Torra's fate was herself. Just over a year ago, the Men of Valor had snatched her up for a debt that Kierse had never even known Torra had. One day, she was home, and the next, she was gone without a trace. Kierse should have been there that day. But they'd had a huge fight the night before. She'd said some horrible things. Torra had told her to leave, and she'd left. Then she never saw her again.

She dropped down onto a snow-crusted step in front of the Lake, sinking into her melancholy as she watched the mer bathe from a distance. Few dared the waters now, and Kierse wasn't stupid enough to do so, either. The mer could walk on two feet when it pleased them, which was how they had ended up in the Lake, but no one wanted to be in their path when they did. They lured sailors to their deaths, had voices like songbirds, and teeth like sharks.

One was staring at her now. "Hello, pretty."

Kierse smiled, not drawn in by the mer's sweet voice. The mer was pure innocence, if you could look past the fact that she likely wanted to drown Kierse at the bottom of the Lake and leave her there for a snack.

"Not today," she told the mer, who splashed water at her in a huff and swam away.

Kierse considered her plight as she headed through Bethesda Terrace and across the Mall, slowly veering west toward Graves's brownstone.

Monsters had taken everything from her. And now even her sanctuary wasn't safe.

Graves wasn't a safe option, either. Not that she had ever considered him one. But he was the one who was going to fix what she'd broken, and he'd never even see her coming.