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Chapter One
The Demon Reach
And it repented the Lord that He had made man of the earth,
and it grieved Him at His heart.
--Genesis 6:6When they turned eighteen, Amy Darien and Billy Max were released from Alliance House, the facility on Gansevoort for abused, neglected, and emotionally troubled children, where they had grown up together, wards of the state. They signed out on the same spring day, after a sloppy city winter, when the honeysuckle air breathed warmly in their faces.
Amy let down her livid red hair, and it fell past her waist. In house, she had to keep it braided and piled atop her head. But she preferred to wear it loose, and that meant it was always blowing in Billy's face, which he liked.
His own dark hair he had shaved close to his blocklike head, for professional reasons. A square, muscular youth, he had worked surreptitiously during the last three years as a mule for one of the city's most vicious wise guys. It was important for his survival that everything about him was tight and under control.
"Sit with me for a minute," Amy said, and tugged at the sleeve of the black glazed-cotton jacket she had bought him to celebrate their independence.
Billy looked down at her where she sprawled, on concrete steps spotted black with five generations of chewing gum. Even here, with the grime of the city under her and the wire-mesh windows and sooty bricks of Alliance House for a backdrop, she resembled to him a fairy-tale princess -- if princesses worepince-nez sunglasses and sable flare pants with a black midriff tee. A bubble expanded in his heart -- love and fear pushing apart, crowding the blood from his ventricles -- and he winced to say good-bye. "Can't sit. Got to meet someone."
She peered over her pince-nez, and her soft eyes held him, eyes the color of trees. "Sit, you goon. This is a big moment."
Seeing her so happy, he buzzed with ungrounded electricity -- the physical, exciting charge of love. "Big moment for you, yeah." Yet, knowing where he had to go agitated a sullen irritability -- and that was the fear. "It's just another workday for me."
"We're out of here. We just signed out for good. We're never going back in there."
"We couldn't if we wanted. We're all growed up, right?" He lifted his stony face to the healthy air fraught with sunlight and a soft wind sluicing from the projects across the street. "We signed ourselves into the bad world for good."
"Come on." She patted the filthy step. "Sit with me. I got something to tell you."
"Look, if it's about the toilet, I'll bring a new flapper by later." He opened his jacket to the velvety wind as if receiving the world to his bosom. In the last six months, Alliance House outreach had helped Amy find a job and an apartment, both in the city, actually in and under the city. He had refused their help. He had bigger plans. "You should talk to that nug of a landlord. Can't believe you're putting eight bills down a month for that scuzzy hole."
"It's a studio, and that hole is under a quartz glass pavement window. I can draw by that light." She tilted her head back and looked up her freckled nose at him. "And it would only cost me four bills if you'd move in."
"What?" he asked through an egregious frown. "I'd have to learn yoga to fit in there with you. Besides, I got a place at Big Steel's for free."
"Free?" she asked skeptically.
"Look, I got to jump."
"What are you running?"
"Usual junk. I'll be by later with Chinese -- and a flapper."
"Forget the Chinese. I got a runway show tonight, late, after midnight. It's a Predawn thing. Something weird and very dick to impress the critics with our goth line." Amy stood and took the collar flaps of Billy's soft, glazed jacket in her hands. "Listen to me. I found you a job."
"I got a job."
"Running numbers and dope for a goon like Big Steel Fiarella is not a job. Beating up people is not a job. That's bad money, Billy."
"Yeah? And what you got lined up for me? Dressing manikins in storefront windows?"
"You don't have the necessary skill to do my job." With half a smile, she took the Ray-Bans out of his inside pocket and fit them over his narrow pugilist's eyes. "Ismailia's husband has a garage on Hudson, and he's looking for someone to start. A mechanic's assistant."
"Ismailia?"
"Yeah. My boss at Noir."
"The vampire lady?"
"No. That's Yenene, the other window dresser. Ismailia's the one with the two scars on her cheeks."
"Where the bullet went in and came out. Yeah. She owns that place?"
"And she's opening another uptown next year. Her husband has this garage on Hudson..."
"Right. And what's he going to pay me? Two fifty a week? I make that in a hour with Big Steel."
"You've been his mule since you were fifteen.
"And I got fifty grand in the box at Citibank. You could be in fashion school today if you'd..."
She pushed away from him and sat down again on the stained steps, hugging her knees and staring at her shoes -- his graduation gift to her: red Renaissance slippers trimmed with tiny faux pearls. "I don't want to hear this noise."
"This isn't noise. This is real money, Amy. Forget about dressing dummies and get the training you need to open your own shop. Get those vampires to work for you."
"No, Billy." She gave a petulant shake of her head. "Not with that money."
"Okay, look. I really got to jump." He...
The Crow: Hellbound. Copyright © by A. Attanasio. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
