Daniel couldn’t shake the feeling of unease he’d had since his conversation with Valentine. The chill nothingness of the anchorage made it impossible to do anything more than simply exist, and he could feel his will to do even that seeping out of him as the slow hours ticked by. He had tried to make small talk with Jesse when she’d first appeared that morning, but her face stayed hard and tense, as though their conversation of the day before had never happened.

It had been handled poorly, Valentine thought. The chimps knew they’d all be leaving the next night just after sunset, but not that she and Edie would be headed in a different direction—back to the South Street Seaport. They would forge quickly ahead, no chimps to slow them down, exit the subway tunnel at Fulton Street and make a break for Orson. 

Daniel woke up with the same feeling he had the day after his plunge into the East River. Only less hungover. His head ached and his body was stiff both from the abuse he’d taken from their vamp neighbors and a night spent in half-sleep on the cold stone floor of the anchorage.

Valentine didn’t recognize the pod, but it was clear they were older vamps, a different generation. You could always tell, even when they were taken young. There was an overall look they had, like something you’d scrupulously cleaned which still didn’t look new again, they were missing that showroom shine, that buff finish, of the young ones. 

Daniel couldn’t move. His heart was beating so fast he thought it might knock a hole through his ribcage. If only his paralyzed lungs would just inflate again, contract and expand, contract and expand.

Edie was itching for a fight. They’d woken up only moments ago and already she and Homer were at it, facing off in the dank underground cellar far beneath the Brooklyn Bridge anchorage where they’d slept through the day. 

Daniel leaned against the red brick foundation of the Brooklyn Bridge, rivulets of hot sweat cooling against his skin in the night air, trying to catch his breath and will himself to accept that what he had experienced in the last twenty-four hours was reality, when what it actually felt like was being high and drunk and on the worst acid trip of his entire life.

Valentine flattened herself against the ground and covered her head as another explosion sent chunks of burning metal raining down around her. 

Orson was on his knees in the living room sorting piles of hardware, suits, duvets, and a delicate pile of Edie’s lingerie.

Daniel’s first waking thought was that nothing should sound like what he was hearing. His mind couldn’t place it. It was guttural, unnatural, the sound of pain and rage distilled.

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