Ravenfall

by Narrelle M. Harris

  Right. All supernatural then. Not exactly carte blanche for a shoot-out, but this was definitely going to be a fight for her life. Worse, she would be handicapped by having to avoid being scratched or bitten by the fox or the werewolf.

  James eased the hatch aside and peered into the dimly lit interior.

  Suddenly, so fast she hardly saw him move – though she felt the breeze of his lightning motion on her cheeks – James struck downward, pulled upward, his right hand wrapped around the throat of a fang-faced man who was trying to snarl and couldn’t make a sound because of the hand crushing his larynx.

  James’s left hand slammed the stake into the vampire’s chest and then all was dust, dust, dust, sprinkling to the floor.

  James Sharpe adjusted his grip on the stake. He looked into her startled face and pointedly held up four fingers.

  Right. This was war, after all. This was saving the Tower Ravens. This was saving not only the Dare brothers: it was, very possibly, saving all of Great Britain.

  James checked again, then took Tavisa’s hands, lowered her to the floor below and then followed. They tip-toed to the stairs.

  ‘Marek?’ someone shouted up the stairwell, ‘Get the fuck back down here. That bitch is getting twitchy again. You said you wanted a bite when she woke up.’

  When no reply came, the voice said: ‘If you don’t want a go, I will. I want to take a photo of her little face when she sees the teeth. That’s always hilarious, when they see the teeth.’

  James thumped his hand against the wall once, then twice, and then he did a really creepy thing. In the low light, he jumped up to take hold of the light fitting and pushed his feet high against the wall. He seemed suspended on the ceiling, though Tavisa could see how he used the ugly lightshade, a nearby door frame and the wall that met this one at right-angles as braces to hold the position. James’s body was mostly concealed in the dark, although he would be visible to anyone who reached the top of the landing.

  A sandy-haired man came warily up the stairs. He wrinkled his nose. ‘You got someone up there with you, Marek?’

  James nodded at Tavisa. At her confusion, he pulled strange emphatic faces.

  ‘Marek, have you been bringing snacks home?’ The blond took another step. ‘Because I’ve fucking told you about not sharing, you dick.’

  James kicked a heel against the wall this time and glared at her. Tavisa took a guess and shrieked in fright. Tell the truth, she didn’t have to fake it all that much.

  ‘Bloody knew it,’ grumped the blond. ‘Leave some for me, you little shit.’

  Tavisa cut-off another cry mid-scream, which she thought was a nice dramatic touch. It certainly brought the blond into view. He hardly had time to register her, standing there with her gun drawn, when a compact body swung across, using the light fitting as a fulcrum, and wrapped legs tight around his neck before twisting and throwing the blond man onto the carpet.

  James sat on top of the vampire, knees pushed into his throat, but he was in no position to stake the vampire’s heart from there. Instead, James plunged the stake through the vampire’s right eye before, almost too fast to see, he half rose while yanking the stake out again and then plunged it into the vampire’s chest.

  More dust, settling quietly.

  James stood up, brushed down his jacket and gave her a challenging look.

  He’s ex-army. Afghanistan veteran. Front line combat medical technician. He’s not solely a doctor; he’s a soldier.

  Tavisa held up three fingers and nodded.

  Movement in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs made them pause. James sniffed then did that ridiculous growly face again. So this must be the werewolf. Tavisa peered at the figure.

  He was a muscular man, at this time of the month looking like nothing more than a scarred costermonger. He took one look at the dust-grimed vampire on the stairs and the woman next to him pointing a gun at his chest, and he swallowed. He pointed towards the kitchen and held up two fingers. Then he put prayerful hands together as he edged towards the front door.

  Tavisa aimed the gun at his head, and he stopped.

  James, not interfering with her sightline, sidled up to the kitchen door. He glared at the werewolf. ‘Call her,’ he mouthed.

  The werewolf shook his head.

  Tavisa levelled the gun between his eyes.

  ‘Spaulding!’ yipped the werewolf, ‘What do you think is taking Marek and Gav so long up there?’

  ‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ said the concealed Spaulding, ‘And what’s that I smell out there? Do I smell gun oil, you idiot? The boss told you no guns. And that’s… those morons. No guns, no girls. Don’t you idiots ever listen?’

  Then she was there, a petite thing with dark hair, darker eyes and a vicious grin, coming out low and fast and flying at James Sharpe with deadly intent.

  James leapt, twisted, grunted with the pain as something aimed at his chest slammed instead into his leg. He landed badly, clutching at the silver blade – the one they had given to Helene – protruding from his thigh.

  Spaulding fell on him with fanged mouth open, biting as she grasped for the hilt of the knife. James punched up into her chest, over her heart. That made the vampire pause ever so briefly, wondering if he’d staked her after all, but he was bluffing. He’d dropped the wooden spike in the opening skirmish.

  Spaulding jabbed at his throat with her fingernails, splitting the skin as he struggled to get away.

  Gunfire – a single shot – a door slamming – Tavisa shouting stop! – Spaulding’s head turned to snarl at her, giving James space to shove a little distance between them and then….

  Dust. Raining down. And Tavisa Datta, chest heaving, holding the stake and staring at James through the ash haze in the weirdest combination of horror and triumph.

  ‘Werewolf did a runner,’ she said.

  ‘You hurt?’ James wrapped a hand around the silver knife in his leg and tugged it out with a hiss. He rose unsteadily and threw the knife away, shaking his fingers to cool the burn. The deep scores in his skin from the vampire’s fingernails were already healing, ‘He didnae scratch or bite you?’

  ‘Nope. He just bolted.’

  She returned the stake to him and together they entered the kitchen.

  Helene was sitting, blindfolded and gagged, at the table. Dried blood was smeared on her forehead and in her hair. Next to her was a man with dark red hair and a very pointed nose and face. His eyes were ember dark, and glowing.

  ‘You’re earlier than we expected,’ he said. ‘But you’re still too late.’

  Tavisa raised the gun.

  ‘Jack Cray. At your service.’ The man grinned with his pointed, foxy face.

  ‘Too late for what? What have you done to her?’ Tavisa demanded.

  ‘Nothing. A sleeping draught. She wasn’t the point. You can have her.’ He spread his hands wide. ‘You’ve rescued her, but how will your artsy fartsy flatmate know that? He hasn’t long now, before he has to sign up or die.’

  ‘What happens,’ snarled James, limping up to the man and pressing the stake to Cray’s throat, ‘if I kill you?’

  Cray the fox-man tilted his head to one side, listening to something in his own head. ‘He says… que sera sera. But Gabriel won’t know she’s safe. Then there’s brother Michael to consider. Gotcha.’

  Cray shook his head, no longer hearing his master’s voice.

  ‘Niall Frazer is happy to let you die,’ said Tavisa.

  In the distance, the sirens of the DI and the back-up team she’d texted from outside were wailing, getting louder.

  ‘I surrender,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to make a difference to Dare now, is it? Like the boss says. He won’t find out she’s safe in time to save himself.’

  James grabbed Cray by the throat and threw him across the room. Cray crashed into the wall with a yelp but then lay on the floor panting and sniggering.

  James checked Helene, dropping
a gentle kiss on her forehead as she stirred. Tavisa, gun trained on Cray, watched as James dribbled a generous amount of spit into his palm and smoothed it against the French woman’s head wound. Helene moaned but her breathing became less laboured and colour came back to her skin.

  After inspecting the blood on his palm – Tavisa had the awful notion he was about to lick it up – James limped to the sink instead to wash his hand. He then tore a larger hole in his jeans, to rinse the swollen knife wound. It had improved but was puffy and discoloured when he left off the task and took out his phone.

  ‘I have tae go,’ he said. ‘Gabriel needs me.’ He was texting rapidly.

  ‘Go,’ said Tavisa. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  James stepped out the front door as the blaring sirens announced the arrival of back-up at last. Despite the limp, he was gone before the arriving police could see him.

  Tavisa picked Cray up by the collar and pushed him out the door. Her colleagues raised weapons, then lowered them again as they saw her.

  ‘Just this one,’ she said to Bakare as he strode up to her. ‘He’s alone. Dare’s friend, Dupre, is in the kitchen. Call an ambulance.’ She shoved Cray into a constable’s hands. ‘Cuff him.’

  Several minutes were spent on untying the hostage and getting a rapid debrief, from which Tavisa had to omit very nearly everything. She’d seen the van pull up, she said, and saw the carpet removed. It made her suspicious, but when she came in, this is what she found. No, she didn’t know where the other people had gone. Yes, it was a lucky break.

  Yes, this was a hellaciously dusty house.

  Cray didn’t contradict a word, only grinned at her.

  Five minutes after James had left, Tavisa couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘I have to go, sir,’ she said to Bakare. ‘Family emergency.’

  Well, she didn’t have to say whose family, did she?

  Bakare started an irate protest, but she was already gone. She ran to her car two alleys away, flicked the siren on and drove hell-for- leather to London Bridge Hospital. She didn’t know what she was going to do there. She was afraid of what she was going to see.

  The deva angel, perhaps, if that’s what it was. Blinding light. Flaming sword. Vengeance or justice or some other bizarre monster rising up from the guts of London to screw up her life. Whatever it was, she had to know. And whoever that falling raven was, she had to know that for certain, too.

  Gabriel won’t find out she’s safe in time to save himself.

  James was right, she thought, the falling bird is Gabriel.

  It made her sick to know it.

  James’s leg hurt, but that meant less than nothing right now. If things had gone to plan, Gabriel would know Helene was safe, but the reference to Michael was unexpected.

  Everything had gone tits up. He could feel it. He wished he’d had time to clean his wound better – vestiges of silver and garlic made the gash burn with pain and prevented it from healing quickly. The effort of running so fast – across Wapping and St Katherine’s, along the foreshore between the Tower of London and the Thames, towards London Bridge and the hospital on the other side – didn’t help at all. Incrementally it hurt less than the first blow, but he hadn’t the time to stop, he hadn’t the time to waste. The seconds he’d stopped to spare a smear of saliva for Helene’s cracked skull and flush the worst of the poison from his own wound might cost him everything else that mattered.

  James Sharpe had not prayed in a very long time. But he prayed now, as he ran through London, leaping across traffic, between buildings, nothing but a blur, an eddy of solid matter, towards the hospital.

  Please. Please. Please. Don’t let me be too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Anthea pressed against the window on the top floor of London Bridge Hospital and tried to see if the message had been received and the protocol implemented. Tavisa’s text – hostage located; getting her out now – followed by James’s confirmation had been welcome, but this was far from over.

  It had gone badly pear-shaped from the start, when Gabriel had failed to arrive at the rendezvous point on this floor with Michael in tow. The chopper had come and gone as she was making her way up, but no Dare brothers were waiting when she got there. They had to still be up on the roof.

  Not knowing what might be on the rooftop, Anthea had been forced to take things slowly. No use bursting out and getting everyone shot before she knew what was going on.

  In the stairwell leading to the roof, she found another of the Bureau’s agents, dead and bloodless, with ragged bite marks in his throat. Well, that answered that question, she supposed. A vampire had brought Frazer up here ahead of time.

  There’d be a goddamned review of procedures if they all lived through this debacle, and a hotly worded demand for better funding. She might personally introduce the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the prisoners held under silver and iron at Bletchley to see how he felt about his bloody austerity measures then.

  She had withdrawn to make her calls, to reorganise the troops in the face of new facts and suspicions. It ate at her to wait, but storming in with no plan was worse than waiting here while she patched up the plans they’d previously stitched together.

  Then she’d heard a gunshot from above. Small calibre, but distinctive. It sounded like the boss’s own compact Sig Sauer P938, with the blackwood grip and the custom-made, silver-coated bullets. That was not good.

  She’d had to keep so much from him, and he knew she was doing that for his safety as well as the nation’s. He’d all but begged her to do that, ordering an auto-update of all his most vital codes and then, instead of opening the list of encrypted alpha-numeric strings, “dropping” the envelope at her desk. She wasn’t supposed to have those codes, but better her than the fox.

  Whatever that gunshot meant, the plan was obviously well and truly FUBAR. Was she going to have to kill Mr Dare after all? Shoot her Michael through the head to spare him something worse? After she’d worked so hard to save him?

  If she must, then she would. She’d promised him, and she’d keep her word, if she could do nothing else. She’d save his soul if she couldn’t save his life.

  Anthea smirked at herself. She wasn’t a romantic at heart, and yet here she was, choosing to save souls. Even supposing Michael Dare had one, or a heart even, for anyone other than Gabriel. But a life, certainly, he had that, and it was precious to her.

  She pressed her forehead to the first floor window once more. She gazed down onto the path running along the river, separated from the water by a low wall lined with railings and decorative black lampposts.

  And there, yes. Dare Minor’s friend from the streets, Switchblade Roy, who had received James’s message too. He had tied a bunch of yellow helium-filled balloons to the railings, the frivolous things bobbing below the line of lightbulbs strung between the lampposts.

  Anthea sent a text to the BUS crew waiting below.

  Hostage released. Send up the team.

  If he stood near enough to the edge of the roof, Gabriel would see Roy’s balloons – the signal they’d devised in the morning’s pow- wow to show that the rescue had succeeded, on the expectation that texting or calling might give away their advantage to Frazer. They’d had to work quickly to build a scenario that gave them time to find Helene Dupre and then circumvent the fox’s plans for the Dare brothers.

  (Anthea tried not to think about that indistinct image of the broken raven, and her own beloved bird, from the dream. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help.)

  If only Anthea knew what the gunshot meant.

  Gun drawn, Anthea made her way up the stairs towards the roof.

  Gabriel looked over his shoulder at Frazer. The fox spirit was sullen; petulant; impatient.

  Michael lay panting at Frazer’s feet. The fingers of his right hand were straining towards the dropped pistol; he was still trying desperately to reach the sole salvation available to him.

  Blood had stopped w
elling out of the wound in his neck, but that was only because Frazer stood over him, a hand extended in his direction, willing Michael’s body to obey the commands of the invading spirit.

  Frazer’s wicked grin returned. ‘You divvint want to die, Rembrandt, and you divvint want him to die, which he will if I get too far away. So be a pet and get yersel’ over here.’

  Gabriel, shaking, looked into the square one last time.

  And… There. Below.

  The signal at long last. Switchblade Roy’s bunch of yellow Get Well balloons tied to the fence railings. Gabriel nearly laughed in relief. Yes, Roy, you’ll get your nice biscuits and all the tea you can bloody drink. Helene was safe.

  James would be on his way to him, now that Helene was out of danger. Assuming James hadn’t been…

  No. He wouldn’t think that way. Instead, he concentrated on the knowledge that Anthea Webb, on the floor below, was free to set the next phase in motion. She’d be here soon.

  To do what? Idiot Michael had messed up so much careful work by trying to be noble. That task – the killing of Michael Dare if no other avenue was left – had rightly been allocated to Anthea; and Michael had ruined it all.

  Gabriel needed time. Time for Anthea to arrive with her back- up; for James to reach him from wherever they’d held Helene. He needed Michael to hold on a little longer. Maybe if he teased this out with Frazer.

  ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘Becoming mine? No, hin. Not like dying which, I won’t lie, stings like a bastard,’ said Frazer.

  Oh, but there, at last, there, movement on London Bridge, crossing from the Monument side of the river, the uneven blur of James arriving at last – uneven? But he’s not hurt. He’s here.

  ‘No more wasting time,’ snarled Frazer, ‘Come to papa, or I’ll come to you.’

  Frazer had a link with Cray. He must know he’s defeated there, Gabriel thought. He doesn’t know I know. But Michael–

  ‘And don’t think yer precious James will save you,’ Frazer continued to sneer. ‘Even if he’s found yer Helene, he won’t get here on time.’