Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3)

by Sinclair, Tracey

  Medea had turned back to her computer.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked her.

  ‘What do you think I’m doing? I’m buying tickets.’

  Chapter 24

  ‘So,’ I said, with a certain degree of smugness. ‘Bet taking out the bad guys in the privacy of a deserted old building seems like a lost opportunity now, eh?’

  Cain gave me a look that said while he had an answer to that question, he was diplomatically choosing not to share it. We were in More London, on the south bank of the river Thames, not far from the foot of Tower Bridge. Standing at the base of the big, shiny Mayoral headquarters building, Jonesy, Cain and I had a perfect view of the bridge – but, alas, this proximity just made the damn thing look more impenetrable, not less. It’s a beautiful structure, sure, and on a postcard or in a movie, it looks positively pretty – but up close it’s also a fuck-off hunk of stone and steel, a giant testament to masonry and engineering smack in a heavily populated, tourist-friendly part of London. True, a lot of the buildings around here were office blocks, so might be emptier at night, and traffic at dawn was likely to be sparse, but that still left plenty of potential witnesses even if you didn’t count the people actually invited to the show.

  Jonesy looked from me to Cain.

  ‘How committed are you to saving this guy again?’ he frowned. ‘I mean, I’ve seen you pull some stone cold shit without blinking…’ Cain’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Jonesy let that sentence hang.

  ‘Nobody said you have to stick around for it,’ Cain shrugged, mildly.

  ‘I’m not planning to bail, I’m just…’ he was interrupted from that thought as Cain held out his arm, and a bird the size of a large dog landed on his wrist, enormous wings flapping.

  ‘Ah. Here’s our recon.’

  ***

  Luckily, the south banks of the Thames (as opposed to the actual South Bank of the Thames – sorry, foreigners, I know this is why people hate us), are often used for promotional events. There’s a decent amount of green space – by London standards – and the combination of that and the scenic backdrop makes it a popular choice for photoshoots and marketing stunts. I’ve seen cars frozen in giant glass blocks, a camel race and, on the day of the royal engagement, a crowd of Kate ‘n’ Wills lookalikes assembled, if I recall, to promote some dating agency. So the sight of a rough looking guy with what seemed to be a very large owl on his arm got only a few passing glances, though I saw a few phones raised for photos, to which Katie raised her wings in a dramatic move that handily obscured Cain’s face, and the tourists wandered off happily, convinced they’d seen a promo for Harry Potter World or something. Once he was sure he wasn’t being observed, Cain stepped sharply under the bridge, disappearing into one of the nooks and crannies that abound near there, from the steps of the bridge to the cobbled streets of Shad Thames. When he came back, he was birdless, and Katie was walking beside him, rearranging hastily pulled on scrubs: she was working at the nearby hospital, so was heading straight back to work after this. She looked mildly grumpy, but I couldn’t blame her – not many friends would spend their only break on a 10-hour shift flying over London for you.

  ***

  ‘Not sure what you expected me to see,’ she said, cricking her neck as she talked. Like most shifters, Katie could assume almost any animal whose mass was reasonably comparable to hers without much effort (there were, apparently, limits to smaller animals, and either that or shifting to something significantly larger took a lot of effort to hold) but she favoured large mammals, so her transformation from bird back to human was accompanied by a lot of painful-sounding clicks and stretches, as she eased out the aches of an unfamiliar shape. ‘I mean, there’s nothing unusual that I can tell. The walkways have glass windows, and there are some windows in the buttresses, though I imagine inside those would be the place to hide when the sun came out as they have a lot of stone walls.’

  ‘And the exits from the towers come out under the bridge, so you could decant to a car or van pretty easily,’ I mused, looking up. I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped she would see – a giant glass cage with handy escape routes clearly marked?

  I’d spent much of the morning doing my own research. Normally, as an events organiser, I would have called up and asked for a tour, under the pretence that I wanted to hire out the venue. But they had turned me down, claiming short notice – though the woman on the phone sounded suspiciously compelled, since even the busiest venue will usually try and accommodate a potential client. So I’d been forced to rely on the lazy girl’s friend, the internet, but that hadn’t made for comforting reading. The structure, built over a period of eight years, was what was called a suspension and bascule bridge (to my shame, I had to look up what that meant, since I thought a bascule was something to do with the French Revolution). The bascules were, in fact, the parts of the bridge that were raised to allow tall ships to pass under it (which I had previously – classily – always thought of simply as ‘the lifty bits’), and which weighed a handy thousand tons each. The most striking features were of course the two towers themselves – these stood over 200ft high, linked by two parallel walkways, equally 200ft in length. Despite being a busy commuter route for both vehicles and people, the whole thing was now run as the Tower Bridge Experience – the ‘experience’ bit presumably added to justify the entrance fee charged tourists who wanted to look around, or climb up onto the walkways. In fairness, the people running this seemed to have done a great job. As well as an exhibition charting the history of the bridge, there were a series of spaces inside you could hire for events: Engine Rooms, North Tower, and, most spectacularly of all, the enclosed walkways, which were easily wide enough to accommodate tables for dining if need be. All of them had plenty of windows. Laclos’ event took place on a Saturday night, so that, presumably, human guests wouldn’t be put off by the fact it would eat into the following morning. This meant at least we didn’t have to worry about rush hour traffic – 40,000 people crossed the bridge daily – but the gap between dawn and the start of the day proper at this time of year wasn’t a long one, which meant the window for a rescue was pretty narrow.

  For the vampires, it was a perfect spot. Unless you had access to a helicopter and whatever launch codes stopped an unauthorised vehicle flying over London from getting shot out of the sky (or you were Spider-man and could scale the towers unaided), a rescue from outside was out of the question, and the vampires themselves would be in control of the narrow, easily guarded entrances to the towers and, from there, onto the walkways. These were also no doubt equipped with the usual security measures major landmarks came with these days – metal detectors and bag searches being de rigueur – which would make smuggling weapons in next to impossible. So, all in all, a fantastic venue for them, not so great for us.

  ***

  I thanked Katie, who headed back to work, trying to look supportive and also ignoring the fact that Jonesy – who obviously found the whole idea of shifters a bit of a freak out – was trying not to openly goggle at her. I turned back to Cain, who was regarding the bridge with an almost wistful expression.

  ‘You know, back in the 1900s, nobody used the walkways. They were mainly frequented by prostitutes and criminals – pickpockets and the like – so the respectable folk stayed away. Vampires used to hunt up there. They’d quite often throw their victims over the side, and pretend they were suicides.’

  Jonesy stared at him. I think he was really finding it quite tough to accept the reality of what his old hunting buddy actually was.

  ‘Maybe they’re going back to their roots?’

  ***

  We mooched around a little longer, before realising staring at a monument wasn’t getting us anywhere. Cain kissed me goodbye, checked I had my gun – this is what passes for romance in my life – before heading off with Jonesy to do huntery things I wasn’t allowed in on. I headed disconsolately back to the flat, assuming in daylight and with Laclos captured, I’d be safe enough alone. At home, I fe
d and cuddled the cat, and, I admit it, had a bit of a cry. I was tired and stressed and it was looking more and more like in less than 48 hours Laclos would be dead and Cain would be gone, and the new rulers of London’s underworld would be people I’d only recently pointed a gun at. I felt, for the first time since all those years ago when I lost my closest friends in a fire, utterly hopeless, so I did what I had not done since I was a small child, a thing I never thought I’d do again. I prayed.

  Chapter 25

  I opened my eyes, and wondered why I was lying on the floor and where the world had gone. Then I blinked a couple of times and the angel came into focus. She did not look happy to see me.

  ‘Wow. I didn’t think that would work.’ I sat up slowly, resting for a moment before I pulled myself unsteadily to my feet, an unsmiling Aeylith showing no inclination to help.

  ‘How dare you summon me?’ she hissed, her voice low, but I was in no mood for an angel lecture, so I ignored that.

  ‘Cain tells me that an angel never stops loving someone,’ I said, almost conversationally, pouring myself a glass of wine with a hand that only trembled slightly. She looked nonplussed at that, then even more so when I poured another and held it out to her. She accepted it warily, sniffing it as if checking for poison. ‘Which means he still loves you, after all this time, is that right? Even after everything you’ve done to him.’

  She flinched slightly at that. Good.

  ‘But that also means that you still love him, even though you did them?’

  She looked truly pained at that. I was glad, suddenly, of my atheism. Super-powered, immortal beings capable of great cruelty I could deal with – I had experience of that – but I wanted no part of a God whose rules would make one lover torture another, and not even grant the gift of forgetting or hatred. Then again, for all I knew, if they really were celestial, their idea of God was as whacked out as those right wing nutjobs who bomb abortion clinics and think gay people cause avalanches, or old men who think it’s somehow holy to convince a 14-year-old child to wear a suicide vest to a mosque or a market. She glowered at me like she could read my thoughts, and bristled under my disdain. But more than that, she hated me. Hated me for being human and weak and, most of all, hated I could be those things and still have Cain care for me. It was a feeling so strong and so obvious it was palpable, and for a moment, I was scared, and I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing.

  Eventually, she spoke.

  ‘You cannot change what must come. We have rules, and he has broken them. Again.’

  ‘I thought you might say that. I figured if him begging and screaming didn’t stop you hurting him back when you were actually lovers, me asking you nicely wouldn’t do it now. Can you at least tell me what’s going to happen to him?’

  Her face twitched into a smile that wiped away all the beauty that should have been there.

  ‘Despise you even as I do, mortal, I would not be so cruel.’

  I swallowed, the wine ashes in my mouth. But she was here, now, so I might as well try.

  ‘Then maybe we can talk a little about religion,’ I said, and she frowned at me, curious. ‘Tell me, what are your views on atonement?’

  Chapter 26

  I’ve had many wardrobe dilemmas in my time, but ‘what to wear to a public execution’ was a new one on me. My Hail Mary pass with Aeylith had been a fairly desperate attempt to… I don’t know. Delay the inevitable? Guilt trip her? But it had only made me feel worse, and I was worried Cain could somehow sense that I had spoken to her. I wasn’t sure I even wanted what little insight I had gained – humans were messed up enough, I couldn’t imagine spending eternity holding onto that kind of grudge.

  ***

  ‘So our big plan is we just go in unarmed?’ I repeated, more to myself than to anyone else.

  ‘They have security checks at the entrance,’ Medea pointed out, for the fifth time, but I could tell that, now the event was actually approaching, she was as dubious about our plan as I was. She’d secured us four tickets – they were limited availability, and 100 quid a pop, so I was definitely asking Laclos for that money back if we all made it out alive – so we’d decided that Medea, Cain, Jonesy and I would be the ones on the inside, leaving Val, Katie, Mariko and Leon to handle the exterior. Val had proven herself pretty handy with the grappling hooks back when we attacked the building in Canary Wharf last year, so if there was a clear path she could scale one of the towers and get an aerial view, and Leon and Mariko were stationed one at either side of the bridge, so we had the exits at least covered for sight, even if we lacked the manpower to do anything more than check out what was going on. So, we had all eventualities covered, except the one where they recognised us as Laclos’ allies when we walked through the door and machine gunned us to pieces on the spot. Even in a life already littered with questionable decisions, this seemed a pretty foolish one to me.

  ***

  The main problem, other than us being unarmed and exposed in an enclosed, hostile environment surrounded by supernaturals who were stronger than most of us and could, in many cases, overhear even our whispered conversations (which made planning seriously difficult) was that we were on a clock. There was, in theory, a window of opportunity before dawn – the vampires would have to retreat to somewhere windowless or shielded before sunrise – but cutting it that fine would risk not only Laclos, but Leon and Mariko also. Cain’s blood might buy Laclos a few minutes of sunscreen, but that was a theory it was pretty risky to test. Had Medea been up to speed, she might have magicked some kind of protection for him until we could break him free, but the tang of wrongness that hung about her made it obvious her magic was still on the fritz. So our grand plan really amounted to little more than scope out the territory and wing it. Comforting, that was not.

  ***

  Still, we made it through the first hurdle: the metal detector and bag check at the entrance. Clearly they recognised us: the burly vampires at the door stood up a lot straighter when they saw Cain, and though they very politely asked him if he would be willing to have a ‘random’ pat down, they were pretty thorough about it. I would have put this down to the fact that even in a suit Cain looked like trouble, but my Sense picked up a genuine unease that was more than just caution, and I suspected word of his fierceness had spread.

  (I could tell you how good Cain looked in a suit, but I’m afraid I might jibber. But good. Seriously good. George Clooney, Don Draper, James Bond level good. It says much that despite the seriousness of our mission, it had taken us three attempts to leave the house. My God, he was handsome. And clearly I wasn’t the only one that thought so. In a room full of humans who were glossy the way only money can buy and screeds of naturally elegant vampires, he was getting an awful lot of hungry looks, and it wasn’t because the vamps were picking up on his premium grade blood. In fact, had he had Medea on his arm – stunning in a deep red silk shift that complemented her skin to perfection, and heels so high and pointy I suspected she’d worn them so they could double as weapons – they would have easily been the most attractive couple in the room. As it was, I admit I spent the first few minutes of our entrance not rolling out my Sense to pick out danger, but instead revelling in all the jealous glances and thinking, ‘Ha! He’s mine, bitches!’ Because, yes, I am that mature.)

  But then all thoughts of triumph faded, because we were into the main walkway, now, and it was then we saw Laclos on display.

  ***

  I’d expected – foolishly, perhaps – that he would look like he had when he was taken by Sebastian: beaten, tortured, broken. But of course that would have raised questions, and gone against the narrative the vampires were pushing, and instead he seemed remarkably chipper for a man sentenced to death. (I wondered, fleetingly, if the way we could get out of this was simply for him to yell for help in front of all these humans, but a muggy air of mild compulsion that my Sense picked up on suggested the vampires had planned for that eventuality.) He was, à la David Blaine, in a glass box that wa
s suspended directly under the walkway, but instead of this being vertical it was – in a tribute to his languorous nature, perhaps, or because it deliberately mimicked a coffin – horizontal. It was spacious – he was sitting propped up against one side of the box, long legs stretched out casually before him, and he looked perfectly comfortable: they’d even furnished him with a silk cushion to lean against, and a bottle of champagne to keep him occupied. It really was the most civilised of executions. There was an oasis in the crowd directly above him – and I suspected this was less to do with fear of him getting an upskirt view than an instinctive suspicion of walking over a grave – but people were looking down through the glass walkway with appreciative curiosity, and he was responding with the occasional cheery wave, champagne flute in hand, as if simply delighted everyone could come to his party. Shirtless, with his painted nails and his lined eyes and his dark hair flowing over his shoulders, he sold the modern magician part well, and suddenly I thought – they’re actually going to get away with this. They’re going to kill him in plain sight, and everyone is going to go home believing they’ve seen a great trick, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

  ***

  Because he was completely inaccessible. The heavy glass box was suspended from cables directly under the walkway, so there was no way to access it without being seen from the outside, and unless we wanted to break through the reinforced glass floor of the walkway, no way to reach it from where we were. Any attempt to break the cables from a distance – y’know, if we had Hawkeye and some explosive arrows or something – would depend on Laclos being able to either fly or survive crashing 200ft onto concrete, which might be a bit much even for a vampire his age with an injection of angel blood. I knew in theory vampires were only killable in certain ways, but I wasn’t sure how ready I was to test that in practice.