A Split Worlds Omnibus

by Emma Newman

  He pointed at the bruising on his neck. “He nearly choked me to death one-handed. He was strong.”

  “So you picked up the bar…”

  “Yeah, and I looked over and he stabbed the woman.” A wave of nausea made him suck in a breath. “There was a horrible sound, when it hit her chest I suppose, and I just threw the bar at him.”

  “And you hit him square on.”

  “Yeah.”

  “From ten metres away, when you were injured and bleeding.”

  He frowned. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I’m just making sure I have all the details, sir.”

  “If I hadn’t hit him he would have stabbed her again.”

  She just nodded. “And then what happened?”

  “I called 999 and I passed out.”

  “The doctor tells me you’re very lucky.”

  Sam looked down at the two iron chunks beside him. The nurse had told him they’d pulled one out of his arm, one out of his side. Apparently they’d formed rudimentary plugs in his wounds. The nurse said they’d never seen anything like it and offered the plugs to him as morbid souvenirs. They were thicker than the railings had been, the policewoman had pointed out, and she wanted to know how they’d got that way. Sam had a working theory it was something to do with Lord Iron and the wedding ring. He couldn’t say anything about it though.

  “I’ve got a cracked rib and a couple of small holes in me apparently. And bruising.”

  He wondered how Cathy and the girl were. The police officer had been professionally vague, saying Cathy was in surgery and the girl was being cared for in A & E. He’d pretended he didn’t know who they were, saying he’d gone to the park to get some fresh air in the midst of a marital crisis and he was passing as the man attacked.

  He needed to speak to Cathy as soon as she woke and warn her that one of the Fae were after her—one of the Thorn brothers, no less. But he’d have to wait until the police had finished taking notes and she was out of surgery.

  “The woman who was attacked will be OK, won’t she?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. It was a serious attack. She’s lucky you were there.” The police officer stood and put her hat back on. “Thanks for the details. You’ll need to make a formal statement when you’re feeling better. We’re doing all we can to catch him.”

  Sam just gave a weak smile, knowing there was no way in hell anyone would find Thorn. He lay back against the pillow, glad to be in a room alone thanks to the need for an interview with the police. The bandages were tight around his torso and arm and he still felt shaky but the nurse had told him that was normal.

  He’d asked them to contact Leanne as his next of kin. He hoped she would at least come and make sure he was OK. She hadn’t left a message and it was driving him mad that the one time she’d called him he hadn’t been able to answer the phone. He felt worn out but every time he tried to relax he thought about the attack.

  There was a brisk knock on the door and a man entered. He wasn’t wearing a white coat nor any medical accoutrements, just a smart suit with a light jacket over it. Sam didn’t recognise him.

  He was carrying a clipboard and an air of importance like that of a hospital administrator or manager. “Mr Samuel Westonville?”

  Something about the way he said it made the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck prickle. “Yeah.”

  “I just need to clarify a few details about the case with you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “DI Taylor.”

  “I just spoke to your constable.”

  “And she highlighted some details I wanted to check myself.”

  “Can I see some ID, please?”

  The man smiled affably, plucked an ID wallet from his pocket and flipped it open. “I understand you interrupted the attack.”

  Sam nodded but the ID hadn’t calmed the sense of there being something dangerous about the man. He thought about how Thorn had disguised himself and wondered if this was him coming to kill off a key witness. Sam’s mouth went dry.

  “Could you explain to me how the railings broke?”

  “I landed on them. Look, I told the policewoman everything and I’m feeling rough. Could we talk about this tomorrow?”

  “I understand. Could I just take a look at the bruising on your neck?”

  “I was telling the truth. He picked me up and threw me.” Sam nervously reached up to his throat. Now he was more concerned they disbelieved him and were going to start seeing him as a suspect.

  The man’s smile became false and froze rictus-like on his face when he saw the wedding ring. He shuddered and took a step back as he made a show of peering at the injury. “Yes, I can see the marks quite well from here. Well, thank you, Mr Westonville. As you said, I should let you rest.”

  The man left quickly. Sam looked at the ring and twisted it nervously on his finger. As soon as the doctor gave him the all-clear he was going to get out of there and go somewhere safe.

  24

  Will paced the length of the small room in three strides, already hating the pale-green walls and faded pastel pictures. Cornelius was perched on one of the chairs, as if trying to minimise contact with the mundane furniture. He looked strange in the casual shirt and jeans he’d changed into for the trip into Mundanus.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Will said.

  “I don’t think you should be alone at a time like this.”

  Will managed a smile and resumed the pacing.

  “I’d forgotten how unpleasant Mundanus smells,” Cornelius said.

  “Hospitals are particularly bad,” Will replied. All he wanted to do was find Sophia. The man from the Agency dressed as a doctor had shown them into the room and told them to wait whilst he got an update on Cathy’s surgery. He’d mentioned in his preliminary report that a mundane man and child had been brought in with her, but hadn’t said anything more about them. Will had been relieved to hear Sophia described as such, having been terrified that the Agency would somehow identify her. Now he just needed to know how badly hurt she was.

  “I’m going to see if I can find a cup of tea,” he said.

  “I can go.” Cornelius half rose out of the chair.

  “No, I need to do something,” Will said. “I won’t be long.”

  He walked away from the room briskly, planning to be round the corner and out of sight as quickly as possible in case Cornelius decided to follow him. Whilst he was grateful for the gesture of support and an extra pair of eyes in case any attempts were made to trick or dupe him, he didn’t want Cornelius to know about Sophia.

  Will headed back towards the accident and emergency department they’d walked through only five minutes before, knowing Sophia would be treated there. He hated the thought of her alone in such a noisy, frightening place, and had to get her back home without the Agency clean-up team knowing.

  He approached the desk and a nurse looked up from her computer. “Good morning. I’m looking for my cousin, she’s almost five years old, blonde hair, brown eyes, she was brought in earlier, she was involved in an incident at a park.” He didn’t want to say she was his sister, just in case the enquiry ended up on a record somewhere for the Agency to find. Paranoia was the best policy where a clean-up was involved.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Sophia.”

  The woman sighed. “Sophia what?”

  A cubicle curtain was drawn back sharply a few metres away, and Uncle Vincent was standing there, looking most grave. “Will, she’s over here.”

  “May I?” he checked with the nurse and she waved him on.

  Will hurried over. “Uncle Vincent? What are you doing here? How is she?”

  He stood aside, revealing Sophia’s sleeping face. There was a gash across her right cheek held together with tiny white plasters. She was lying under a blanket but he could see she was in a hospital gown and her arms were bandaged. He went to her side and brushed his fingertips over her hair, barely able to breathe.

>   “You’d better have a damn good explanation for how this happened,” his uncle said.

  “Whoever did it almost murdered my wife,” Will whispered.

  “You were supposed to be looking after her.”

  “I don’t need you to make me feel any worse. They were attacked at a park. Cathy was stabbed—she’s in surgery now.”

  “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Will Catherine pull through?”

  “I don’t know. How did you know Sophia was here?”

  “Your mother asked me to keep an eye on her. I saw her in an ambulance through the scrying glass and I watched until I knew where she was. I’ve only been here ten minutes.”

  “Do my parents know?”

  “No. I don’t think they need to yet, do you?”

  Will looked back down at Sophia. She looked so small in the huge bed. “No. How badly is she hurt?”

  “She’s covered in puncture wounds.” His uncle’s voice wavered and he cleared his throat. “The policewoman said she was found in the undergrowth but they don’t understand why her wounds are so bad. The doctor said she’ll be scarred. They’ve given her something to make her rest. She was very distressed, understandably.”

  Will gripped the edge of the bed, wanting the one who did it to be dragged in so he could personally rip his throat out. “Do they need to do anything more?”

  “No. I just didn’t want to move her until I saw you. I knew you’d be here soon enough.”

  Will took one of his calling cards from his wallet. “Get a taxi to the Hyde Park stables in Bathurst Mews, ask for Jones and give him this card. Tell him who you are and ask him to take you to my house. Remember, they think Sophia is my cousin. I’ll come home as soon as I have a full report from the Agency and know when we can extract Cathy from mundane care. Don’t leave until I get home.”

  “Is it safe for her there?”

  “Yes, damn it, of course it is. And go now, the Agency’s clean-up team is here. I don’t want you to be seen with her.”

  Vincent said nothing as Will kissed Sophia’s forehead gently and returned to the waiting room.

  “No tea?” Cornelius asked.

  “The machine only took coins,” Will said with a shrug. “I only have notes on me. Has the Agency man been back yet?”

  “No.”

  Will sat down and rested his head in his hands, trying to drive the image of Sophia’s injuries from his mind. The feeling of complete impotence made his skin itch, as if all the anger was crawling beneath it like insects. He wanted to punch someone and throw the chairs around the room and yell as loud as he could like some bestial man, but he forced himself to stay still. He would find out who did it, and kill them. The thought helped.

  The door opened and the Agency man walked in, looking shaken. Will’s chest felt like steel bands had been wrapped around it as he stood and looked at the man expectantly.

  “There are some complications to this case I feel I should discuss with you in private, Mr Iris.” The man took the stethoscope from around his neck and laid it on one of the chairs.

  “Cornelius, would you excuse us?”

  Cornelius gave the man a long look as he left the room.

  “Let’s sit down.”

  Will did as he suggested, noting the tension in the man’s shoulders and the way he adjusted his position a couple of times once seated.

  “How is my wife?”

  “She’s still in surgery. It’s very serious, Mr Iris, she nearly died. Had the knife been removed by the attacker she would have bled to death before the ambulance could arrive. Ironically, leaving the weapon in her was the best thing that could have happened in the unfortunate circumstances.”

  Will ran his hands through his hair and looked up at the ceiling. “What are they doing to her?”

  “I’ll get access to the full details once she’s out of the operating room, but from what I’ve gathered so far one of her lungs has collapsed and she’s bleeding severely into her chest cavity. They’ve had to insert a tube—”

  Will held up a hand. “How long will she be in surgery?”

  “I can’t say with accuracy. They’ll have to leave the chest tube in for several days at least until the lung has healed. Mrs Iris was kicked and knocked out. She has a concussion as well as a bad bruise to her jaw and deep cuts on her arms. She must have been defending herself.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Her hands are badly cut too, though no one understands why. There will be extensive scarring, especially to her chest, and it will take several weeks for her to recover fully if she makes it through the surgery without further complications.”

  “The ones you mentioned?”

  “Ah, no, sir. I told you when you arrived that the initial police report was of a man and child found injured in the same attack.”

  Will held his breath, expecting him to say something about Sophia.

  “We’ve looked into the man’s statement and there’s…something odd about what he did. I’ll read you the preliminary report.”

  Will listened to a description of a man ending the attack by throwing an iron bar. At first, Will was simply glad he’d been there, but when he was told about the way the railings had broken, the iron plugs in the man’s wounds, the accuracy of the difficult shot and no athletic background, his frown deepened.

  “All of this, and the fact a very experienced colleague detected something…disconcerting about a ring he wears, leads us to suspect he’s connected to the Elemental Court.”

  “The who?”

  “We know very little about them, I’m afraid, but we know they have an arrangement with the Sorcerers. It seems a representative of Lord Iron defended your wife.” He leaned closer. “Would you have any idea why?”

  “No,” Will said, disturbed by what he was hearing. “I’ve never even heard of a Lord Iron. Are they like our patrons?”

  “I wouldn’t like to speculate, sir. Information on them is remarkably difficult to come by.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. All of this will be kept confidential, won’t it?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “What about the weapon? You said it wasn’t removed. Does that mean we have a way to find the attacker?”

  “The weapon was a stiletto, which is easy to conceal. It’s currently held by the police as evidence but we’ll recover it. From the initial report, there are no markings of note on it, but then I wouldn’t expect there to be.”

  “Are there any leads?”

  The man shook his head. “Not yet, sir. The crime scene is crawling with mundanes at the moment so it’s very difficult for us to use our own methods to ascertain anything concrete. Should anything arise we’ll inform you, of course. Our primary function is to prevent a breach and avoid the wrath of the Sorcerers by having the mundanes poking their noses where they should not.”

  Will nodded, wondering if he could hire an investigator of some kind. Then he imagined Cathy in surgery, the blood, the people manhandling her like she was a piece of meat. “The doctors…they wear gloves, don’t they?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When can I take my wife home?”

  “I would recommend removing her to the Nether once she’s out of intensive care. Mundane medicine is really quite remarkable. There’s no better way to ensure her survival with such serious injuries.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “I’ll know once she’s out of surgery. We have someone posted to watch her twenty-four hours a day. Once she’s well enough to be nursed at home we’ll start the full clean-up.”

  “And you can provide a nurse?”

  “Yes, sir, fully vetted, as all our staff are.”

  Will nodded. “Please brief my steward on what will be needed.”

  “There’s another matter I feel I should bring to your attention.” The man looked nervous. “Another complication.”

  Will straightened. Don’t mention Sophia, he though
t. Don’t mention—

  “Your wife was carrying a mobile phone and an iPad. Both are devices used by the—”

  “I know what they are,” Will interrupted. “I’ve recently returned from my Grand Tour.”

  The man coughed to disguise his embarrassment. “My apologies. It’s registered to Catherine Parker, with an address in Manchester.”

  “Manchester? What in the Worlds—?”

  “Indeed, sir. We’re looking into the possibility that your wife borrowed it. But my suspicion, if I may be so bold, is that your wife has a mundane alias based in the dark city. The police will look at the logged calls as part of the investigation.”

  “Well, you have to lock that all down,” Will said, feeling sweat break out on his palms. “Immediately.”

  “That will be very difficult—”

  “That’s what you do, isn’t it? That’s what I’m paying you for?”

  The man nodded.

  “I want details of all the phone contacts, the address, everything, and I want that separate from any notes you keep on this case,” Will said, lowering his voice. “I don’t want any of it to be seen by your boss. I don’t want anyone except you and me to know.”

  “That’s rather—”

  “I’ll pay you handsomely for the inconvenience,” Will added.

  The man looked him in the eye and understood the bribe. “I see, sir. I’ll consider it my personal priority and will exercise the utmost discretion.”

  So Horatio’s accusations had been true. Cathy had been in Mundanus and established enough to have another identity. Why Manchester of all places? The thought of her having so much hidden from him was a shock, but it explained the way she talked and the way she’d dealt with that problem with the furniture. No wonder she’d been so keen to take Sophia into Mundanus; she was exploiting an opportunity to use the internet. But why?

  Then he realised the man who saved her from the attacker was probably her lover, the one Horatio had sneered at him about. She’d probably been at the park to meet that man and Sophia had provided the perfect excuse to linger there with him.

  Will twitched at the thought of it. He wanted to throttle the man, even though he’d saved his wife. He needed to find him and tell him to stay away from Cathy. Will clasped his clammy hands together and tried to find some calm in the midst of the primal rage. He had to think, not react like a caveman. The Fidelity Charm would have made it impossible for Cathy to be unfaithful to him, but it wouldn’t have stopped her being in love with this man. It must have been the reason behind her reluctance to consummate the marriage; she was trying to stay faithful to a man she fell in love with in Mundanus.