by James Fahy
What we found, eventually, was not a crumbling gothic castle, but it was worse, in my opinion.
“What is that?” I said, seriously out of breath. We had been trudging through the trees for time out of time, though I was the only one of us making any noise. Sofia moved like a shadow. She didn’t seem remotely out of breath.
She halted now, right in front of me, evidently having seen the same thing that had caught my eye through the darkening boles of the trees.
“It is a bunker,” she said quietly, with curiosity dancing around the edges of her voice.
I pushed brittle, damp branches aside to get a better look.
There was a small clearing in front of us, surrounded on all sides by the forest. Half buried in the leaf-strewn ground, on a bed of dead and mossy grass, there was a long low building. It looked something like an old air-raid shelter. Concrete walls, cracked, discoloured and flaked, reclaimed here and there with straggling fingers of dead ivy, which seemed to be trying to pull it deep under the ground. The windowless flanks of the curved, decaying structure stared out blankly at the woods from beneath a wrapped roof of corrugated iron, long since mottled and orange with rust. Stains from the battered and leaf-mulched roof had run down the concrete in rivulets here and there, dark stains like dripping gore long-since dried. There was a steel door, riveted and closed. The whole place looked extremely uninviting.
“You don’t happen to hear the sound of a chainsaw anywhere, do you?” I said quietly. Sofia gave me an odd look.
“Never mind,” I shook my head. “Well, this looks like a charming little getaway, doesn’t it? Not menacing or horrifying at all. Not in the least. Let’s go.”
There was no sign of life as we made our way across the open space of the hollow to the old shelter. I had no idea what it was. It looked functional and government to me. Possibly ex-Cabal, but maybe older. Back when the world fell over, a lot of people fled the old cities if they could. Long before we got our act together and made our new walled bastions, for many, the best chance of survival was hiding isolated in the wild places. There had been a lot of smug doomsday preppers in bunkers and shelters just like these. They hadn’t been smug for long though. The Pale had a way of sniffing you out, eventually. Most of them had become graves, not safe hideaways.
But I also knew that Cabal, in its infancy, had stockpiled supplies in places like these, all over the country. Some had been storehouses, others had been secret labs, restricted access, much like the one somewhere high in the north of the country where my father and his fellow associates had first created the Sentinels themselves. It was possible, I reasoned, as we crept through the rustling grass in the dying light towards the foreboding building, that there had been one in Wytham Woods as well.
“Is that… a garden?” I whispered, incredulous.
“Herbs, vegetables,” Sofia confirmed, nodding.
Against all odds, and only adding to the creep-factor, there were a wealth of plants and low shrubs, clearly quite deliberately planted, all around the building. If this was someone’s forest getaway, I would be giving it a very low rating on holiday review sites. ‘Stunning location, rural and peaceful, however an overwhelming air of pervasive menace and decay slightly marred my stay’.
There was a sign on the metal door as we reached it. Bolted to the warped and peeling layer of paint which might once have been a dark and industrial green, but now flaked away like sloughed, dry skin. It had likely once held a warning. ‘Restricted’, ‘Authorised Personnel Only’, something of that nature. It was impossible to read however, as someone had spray-painted new lettering over the top of it, bright garish crimson, which I read out loud.
“Gingerbread Cottage.” I looked sidelong at Sofia, who stood staring at the door with her arms folded. “Fuck… this… right in the ear.”
“After you, Doctor,” the Tribal smirked.
Chapter 24
The door wasn’t locked. It was stiff however, and I had to lean all my weight against it to push it open with a grinding, tortured squeal that echoed tremendously into the darkness which lay within. Well, at least we’ve announced ourselves, I thought. So much for the element of surprise. There was no point now in trying to be sneaky.
“Avon calling!” I yelled into the inky maw within. My voice echoed back to me in a hollow tone. It smelled strange in here. Not the damp, mouldering smell I would have expected from an abandoned outpost deep in the woods. I couldn’t place the smell exactly, but it was vaguely medical.
“It’s empty,” Sofia said.
“Hold on, I don’t even have my flashlight on yet,” I fumbled in my pocket.
“I can see perfectly well in the dark,” Sofia reminded me. “There are stairs down.”
Finding my torch, I flicked it on and danced the beam around the interior of the bunker, making sure to hold it up near my shoulder, the way I’d seen Scully on X Files do a million times. Dust flickered through the beam as it rolled over what sparse furnishings there were inside. A few rows of near-empty metallic shelving, thick with dust and cobwebs, some of which had fallen toppled against one another. In one dark corner, a broken swivel office chair, the padded seat torn and fluffy. There were a few piles of paper here and there, curled and brown with age, probably fossilised and likely to turn to dust at the lightest touch of my fingers.
Importantly, in my opinion anyway, there wasn’t a grinning hell-clown in a haze of smoke standing anywhere I could see. This was a big tick in the plus column for me.
Sofia closed the door behind us as she followed me inside, with just as much noise but far less effort than I had opened it. The only light now was my torch.
“Why did you shut the door?” I hissed. “Is cutting off our escape route really the best idea?”
“We’re here to hunt, Doctor. It’s our prey that I don’t want to escape. Look.” She gestured into the shadows.
Just as she had said, at the far end of the black room, there were indeed stairs descending underground, cut into the floor in a metal spiral staircase.
“Down, down to goblin town I guess,” I said, as we made our way over to them.
The stairs led down for a couple of stories it seemed, our boots clanking loudly on their metal surface, grey walls tight around us. They ended in a metal door, which had a circular wheel lock in its centre. The kind you saw on bank vaults and old ships. I tried it. It didn’t budge.
“Let me,” Sofia said behind me. Her voice sounded odd, slightly garbled, as though she were talking through too many teeth, and I turned in curiosity, flicking the light over her, and almost jumped out of my skin.
When I’d met Kane, the Tribal Leader, he had explained to me that most shapeshifters had three forms. They lived with one foot in each world, and could appear in the form of a human or an animal, in his case a large black bear. But they could also, with skill and control, straddle the two, a kind of person-beast. I had never seen Sofia in anything other than her human form, but as we had descended the staircase, she had slid, silently in the dark, partway into animal. Her face was now monstrous, a fierce wrinkled maw filled with large sharp teeth, eyes elongated and flashing in the jittery beam of my torch. Her skin had darkened and looked stretched tight, bruised like a plum over the half-animal bones now pushing out from beneath. She was also considerably taller than before.
“Jimminy frickit!” I hissed, almost dropping my Taser. “Can you warn me next time?!” The were-beast tilted its head at me curiously. It was distinctly uncomfortable being in such close, confined quarters in the dark with her. I’d never thought to ask Sofia what kind of animal she shifted into. I wasn’t at all sure of the social manners of doing so. GO Liaison or not, I was hardly up to speed with Tribal etiquette. But it was clear to me the answer was some kind of cat. A panther maybe, or a puma. One from the specifically kitty version of Hell.
She chuckled at me a little wickedly, clearly amused to have scared the crap out of me. This oddly put me a little more at ease, if only because it sounded li
ke the dog from the Wacky Races cartoon.
If I ever get anything resembling a normal day, I thought silently to myself, I seriously need to consider start hanging out with some normal people. Not vampires with jewels in their heads and arms on fire, not creature-feature crazy cat ladies. Maybe I’ll join a hot yoga class. Make a regular friend. Someone called Pam who likes macramé and has a gluten allergy, and isn’t remotely paranormal in any way.
I secretly envied imaginary macramé Pam.
Sofia reached past me, her hands, which were more large claws now, threading through the grips of the wheel. With one tortured squeal of metal, she forced it around, and it spun. Stepping back, she kicked open the door.
“Let us see…” she half spoke-half growled, in a good-natured but nightmarish way, “what is behind door number one.”
“Remind me to call you if I ever lose my keys.”
At this point, I wasn’t sure what I expected to be beyond the door. I don’t know what people hide in basements in the woods, but the chances of it being a subterranean candy store were slim.
I certainly didn’t expect what we found. A large low room lay beyond, with doorways suggesting other chambers radiating from it. One entire large wall at the far end was filled with monitors, floor to ceiling, showing countless CCTV and drone views of the city from every conceivable corner and angle in grainy grey hues. There were panels before the monitors filled with countless buttons and gears, like the front of an aeroplane cockpit. Various tables set out around the room were cluttered with all manner of arcane-looking bric a brac. Racks of test-tubes, Bunsen-burners hissing beneath suspended globular beakers, books scattered over every surface between the scientific paraphernalia. It looked like a cross between an observation station and a mad scientist’s laboratory from an old hammer-horror movie. Even more incongruous was the remaining furniture, wedged here and there between the experimental worktops and every available bit of wall space.
There was a Welsh dresser, gleaming with neatly arranged china plates. There was a chiminea, crackling brightly with logs, in one corner, and arranged around this makeshift fireplace, two tattered old wingback chairs in busy but faded patterns. A host of dried herbs hung from the ceiling.
The only thing missing from the scene was a skull with a dripping candle placed on top and a raven in an old rusted cage. Add those, and we could have stumbled into a branch of Necromancers-R-Us.
The two wingback chairs were occupied, each containing a woman with long, grey, unbound hair, which was tangled and frizzy. Both looked in their seventies and were identical. They were wearing what might once have been very old fashioned laboratory coats. White, presumably, at some point in their distant history, but now looking rather mottled and dusty.
Both women had turned to look at us as we entered, curious expressions on their hollow-cheeked faces. They were very pale. Neither of them looked startled or afraid which, considering that Sofia was looming at my side like a nightmare hybrid, was impressive.
One of the women was holding a fussily decorated teacup. The other had been cradling some knitting, which she now rested in her lap.
“Oh,” she said, in a quiet and rather hoarse voice. “You’re not who we expected at all.”
“Not at all,” said the other. “But we knew you’d be coming sooner or later. He said you would be coming. Didn’t he say?”
The first woman nodded enthusiastically, her hair floating around her head like dusty wire wool. “He did, yes. He did say,” she agreed, sounding full of wonder.
“Who… are you people?” I demanded to know, entering the bizarre room cautiously, my eyes flicking away from the odd couple of ghost-like ladies and around the room. The place looked half experimental laboratory, half cosy homestead. “Where is he?”
“Where’s who, dear?” one of the old women asked softly, placing her teacup back in her saucer, completely unrattled by the Taser I held facing her at arm’s length. “There are so many different people you could be asking that about. Fallen down the cracks.”
“That’s right,” the other agreed. She leaned on the arm of her chair, making the battered old thing creak. “There are an awful lot of misplaced people in your life at present, Dr Harkness. Your father, your vampire gentleman-friend, the great bear, the dark one, the-”
“Chase!” I snapped. “Chase Pargate. I know he’s here. What… is this place?”
Sofia growled low and long in her throat beside me. “They are the others,” she rumbled. “The ones I smelled. There’s something… they don’t smell like anything I know.”
I turned my full attention back towards the women. Were they some kind of Genetic Other I wasn’t aware of yet? “Okay, Havershams,” I swallowed, trying to retain control of the conversation. “First things first. How do you know who I am?”
“Because I told them, sweetness,” a voice behind us, light and cheerful.
We both spun in surprise, Sofia growling. Chase Pargate stood in the doorway, having somehow descended the steps behind us without making the slightest bit of noise. His face was happy and smiling, looking absolutely delighted to see us. To my surreal astonishment, he was carrying several plastic grocery bags in his arms, which he handed to Sofia, apparently unfazed by her shifter Tribal appearance, if he even noticed it at all.
“Would you? Thanks so much.” He bundled them into her arms, puffing out his cheeks in theatrical exhaustion. “I’ve been carrying them all the way from town and my bloody arms, honestly. Thank you, chicken.”
The Tribal was so taken aback, she took the groceries from Pargate, who was in the process of shrugging out of his long red leather jacket and pulling the door shut behind him.
I stared at him.
He grinned at me with a wide and playfully disarming grin, looking for all the world like a happy child at Christmas, rubbing his hands together. “Brr! Lawds-a-malky, it’s brisk out there! Halloween tomorrow, can you believe it? Where does the year go?” He shook his head in astonishment. “Now… you’re probably wondering-”
I tazed him. Hard in the chest from point-blank range, the flickering lights and crackling noise making his body jump and dance almost comically in the doorway. I hadn’t blinked. I watched him slump to the floor in a crumpled heap, unconscious. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sofia set the grocery bags down gently on the floor.
Behind me, one of the two women spoke, setting her teacup down on the saucer with a clink and sounding politely scandalised. “Oh my.”
Chapter 25
Five minutes later, Chase Pargate was tied to one of the wingback chairs. I stood in front of him, still holding the Taser, impatient for him to come around.
Sofia had returned to her human appearance and was standing by the now closed door like a stern bouncer, just in case anyone had the bright idea to try and run away. The two odd women had retreated behind one of the long tables, where they were busying themselves unpacking the groceries in a business-like fashion, apparently completely unfazed by the whole experience.
I watched Chase come around, flicking his mop of yellow hair off his face and licking his dry lips. He opened his eyes suddenly, in a most ungroggy way.
“Well,” he said, after clearing his throat. “I suppose I deserved that. I’ve tazed you in the past after all. Fair play, darling.”
“Did you do it?” I demanded, staring at him.
He looked up at me with a tiny frown. “Usually, the answer to that is yes, to some degree or other. But narrow it down for me, will you?” He flexed his wrists against the thick rope binding his arms to the wingback chair. “Gosh,” he sounded nostalgic. “I haven’t been electrocuted and tied down for ages.”
“Sorry, my boy,” one of the women said behind me, sounding distracted as she fished a box of eggs out of the bag before her. She waggled it in his direction. “The young lady insisted. So polite.”
He blinked at them. “You did this? Honestly,” he sighed. “There’s no loyalty anymore, sisters.” He wriggled experimenta
lly. “These are good knots though,” he said, sounding appreciative and impressed.
“Oh, thank you, dear,” the woman smiled, sounded touched.
“These girls didn’t bring any of their own, see,” her twin nodded, stacking yoghurt pots on the counter. “Bit of an oversight that, going into the woods without rope.” She held up a pack of dried noodles, squinting at them closely. “Are these buckwheat? I said udon.”
Chase turned his attention to me. “They’re such accommodating hosts,” he said proudly.
“Did you kill them?” I snapped. “Dee and Griff?” I leaned forward and held the Taser under his chin, making him tilt his head back a little. “And give me a straight answer, for once in your life. I need to know.”
Pargate’s eyes flicked from the Taser to me. They sparkled in the flickering light of the chiminea. “You’re planning to kill me?” he said quietly. “That never really works out. I think you already know you missed the boat on that one.” He shifted a little in the chair and sighed. “But no,” he said. “Of course I didn’t kill your friends. I’m sorry they’re dead.” He actually looked earnest for once. “Really, Phoebe.”
“You didn’t break into Blue Lab? Steal our evidence? Attack my team?”
“Oh, I did the first two,” he nodded happily with a smile. “I needed things. You had them.” He raised his eyebrows. “What? You think you’re the only one investigating what dark things are happening during this street carnival?”
“Coldwater positively identified you as the attacker,” I argued.
“I have one of those faces,” he smirked. “But seriously, Doctor. Do you swallow every spoonful Cabal give you? Even when I worked for them, most of it used to stick in my throat.”
I took a step back, still cautious. “You’re saying she lied?”
