Mhari nods cautiously. “Ghosties and ghoulies.”
“Technical term. Don’t tell me you can’t hear them? Nice doggies, those Hounds, just don’t let them touch you or catch you in a rectilinear killing zone.”
“Oh yuck.” Mhari pauses. “So it’s show time like, now? I’d better change.”
“No, really?” Persephone raises an eyebrow. “And here I thought you were planning on attending a cocktail party.”
“Bah.” Mhari stalks back towards the spare room where her kit bag is stashed. She’s still dressed for the office, and after an afternoon of meetings she’s not in the mood for Persephone’s precaper ribbing, even though she knows it’s the other woman’s way of psyching herself up. This evening Mhari would rather be anywhere else than playing live-action Portal against a mad billionaire who might be possessed by an undead god. She changes quickly into an outfit similar to Persephone’s, except for a lack of offensive weapons that she isn’t trained to use anyway. “Walk a mile in the other guy’s boots indeed.” According to Mrs. MacDougal it makes for better human resources asset management, but she can’t help wondering if she’s the butt of an elaborate practical joke as she clips on the last of her supersecret agent outfit, pulls on her shoes, and heads back out to join Persephone.
“I started the count,” Gary volunteers, hovering. “We’re at four minutes. I’ll give you a call at thirty, sixty, and ninety minutes, then at one hundred. If you’re not out by one hundred and ten, I kill the grid and activate the emergency plan.”
“Correct.” Persephone frowns, focusing intently on the telescoping steel bar she’s holding. The chain-link ladder with its lightweight treads loops around the bar, and she makes sure both ends rest across the full diameter of the circle and the treads are stacked in a mound in the middle of it. Above them, Persephone has set up a low metal frame that straddles the circle. Mhari notices that she’s wearing heavy-duty insulated gloves, and shivers: she can feel the hunger of the things trapped in the swirling vortex of power. “Okay, dialed in for a four-fifty drop, the ladder is six meters long, that should work fine. And go.”
Persephone presses a button on the second box and the circle of floor within the grid abruptly vanishes. The chain-link ladder unrolls with a silvery clatter until it dangles, wobbling side to side above a carpet. Everything Mhari can see looks perfectly mundane—except that it shimmers slightly, as if glimpsed through blue-dyed water. “Okay, I’m going first. Headset on.” Persephone taps her headset’s microphone, then grabs the frame above the portal, raises a foot, and places it on the ladder, taking care not to touch the energized circuit as she does so. Then she descends into shimmering turquoise light.
Mhari swallows as she waits. At last Persephone says, “Clear,” in her headset; the chain-link ladder wobbles wildly as she drops free. “Portal is about one-ninety centimeters up, ladder comes to within a meter of the carpet. Come on down, the water’s lovely.”
Mhari climbs down the ladder, copying Persephone’s extreme caution in avoiding the energized portal circuit. This is so childish, she thinks. If we get busted doing this I’m going to die of embarrassment! What am I doing, playing make believe like I’m some kind of secret agent? The Field Ops specialists have always struck her as living in some sort of Boy’s Own fantasy world, a looking-glass universe where they get away from the boredom and the office politics by playing games without frontiers. Even a six-month stint with the Home Office, wearing a glorified police uniform, working with genuine card-carrying superheroes and punching lunatics with a Lycra fetish, hasn’t given her a taste for adventure—quite the opposite, in fact.
As her head passes below the level of the grid her vision blacks out. She’s overtaken by a ghastly and appalling hunger, a pointed reminder of the life-altering infection she’s been living with for the past year, that has forever excluded her from normal life and relationships. For a moment she begins to panic, but then she keeps climbing.
She counts her way down twenty rungs and then her vision abruptly returns. The hunger subsides: spillover from the trapped V-parasites in the portal. She’s hanging from an emergency ladder in an entrance lobby almost identical to the one upstairs, except for the color of the carpet and the darkness hovering above her in midair. She resists the urge to giggle and concentrates on finding the next rung down. Eventually her questing foot can’t find anything. “Uh. ’Seph?”
Persephone’s face appears at the end of the hall. “You’ve bottomed out, lower yourself by hand or jump, it’s not far.” She speaks softly, relying on her headset.
“Right.” Mhari steels herself and lets go. “I’m down.”
“Over here.” Persephone beckons. As Mhari follows her into the living room she glances back. The ladder dangles in midair in blatant violation of the laws of physics, but when seen from anywhere other than directly underneath it, the portal is almost invisible, a hair-thick slice of darkness in the air directly below the ceiling.
“Sitrep?” Gary asks in Mhari’s ear, startling her.
“Sit—oh, I’m down, ’Seph’s down, I think”—Mhari listens hard—“we’re alone here.”
“Confirm,” Persephone echoes. “Raise the ladder until I call for it.”
“Raise the—” Mhari catches her eye.
“Yep. If we have a visitor, you hide, I’ll take care of them. If they open the front door and see the ladder, the game’s up.”
“Right.” Mhari swallows. “Sweep the suite?”
“You go for the bedrooms and bath, I’ll tackle the living room, hall, and closets.”
“On it.”
The layout of Schiller’s suite is identical to the one the Laundry rented two floors up, and intimately familiar from a monthlong stakeout. There are four bedrooms, the largest one with an en suite bathroom and sitting area, all of them equipped with walk-in, mirror-fronted wardrobes along one wall. There are two secondary bathrooms and a robing area with stool and dressing table. There’s a compact kitchen with fridge, microwave, and cupboards. So Mhari pulls on her blue latex gloves and gets down to searching them.
Two of the secondary bedrooms show signs of being occupied by women: closets hung with business suits, blouses, and a couple of formal gowns in carriers; chests of drawers with underwear; suitcases empty and stashed neatly in the wardrobes. Dress shoes lined up neatly two by two. Toiletries and makeup boxes in the dressing area tell their own story, as do the wardrobes. Schiller’s handmaids have clearly settled in for the long haul, but their rooms are frustratingly free of anything approximating signs of independent personality: both of them have bibles out and prominently positioned on the bedside table, but that’s about it. The kitchen shows signs of a succession of takeaway meals, and there are coffee supplies and soft drinks in the fridge but, again, there is absolutely nothing that betrays any sign of personality. There are no casual clothes, no magazines or newspapers, no games or distractions or stuffed toys or jewelry or ornaments. Mhari shudders for a moment as a chilly flush washes over her. It’s almost as if they come home from a day at the office, read the bible, then climb into bed and switch off like robots.
She moves swiftly on to the master bedroom. Again, it’s bereft of personality. A rail of men’s suits—conservative but expensively tailored, if she’s any judge of quality—fill the wardrobe, along with a row of shirts and a rack of ties. The same bible, this time with a somewhat dog-eared look. Mhari picks it up, then puts it down again hastily when it stings her fingertips. That’s unusual: PHANGs don’t have any kind of reaction to religious symbols—contra popular vampire mythology—so she takes out her smartphone and calls up the OFCUT app. “Schiller’s bible is contaminated,” she tells Gary and Persephone, “medium-high thaum count.”
“If you can bear to check it, can you tell me if it contains the Apocalypse of St. Enoch?” Persephone replies after a moment. “Should be near the back.”
Mhari flips it open. “Huh. Weird … you’re right, there’s a lot of stuff here I don’t remember f
rom RE classes.”
“Okay, at least we’ve been bugging the right guy.” Persephone sounds edgy.
Mhari closes the book and continues. The en suite bathroom contains more masculine toiletries: aftershave, a razor and accoutrements, and a bag full of medication. Schiller is on a bunch of stuff. Mhari photographs all the labels, just in case they’re useful to someone. “Cialis—is that what I think it is?” she asks over the open circuit.
Gary chuckles nervously. “Weekend get-it-up drug, you mean?”
“Schiller’s on a bunch more stuff. How old is he again? Fifty-five?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
Persephone cuts in tonelessly: “Focus, please.”
“Yes, mum.” Mhari puts the medications back where they were, then starts checking the luggage at the bottom of Schiller’s walk-in wardrobe. “Oh my.”
“What is it?”
“Is our man into the mortification of the flesh, or what?” Mhari blinks at the contents of the second suitcase, then pulls out her phone for some more candid snapshots. “I see a, a ball gag, some kind of bridle, manacles … is that a chastity belt? Kinky!” She zooms in. “Uh. That doesn’t look right … there’s blood on it.” Suddenly it’s not remotely funny. “Something’s wrong here. These aren’t, they’re not toys. I mean, if Schiller’s into consensual BDSM he’s really hard-core.”
“Schiller’s hard-core all right, but it’s the no-sex-except-for-procreation kind of hard-core that gets him up.” Persephone sounds distracted. “Mhari, come into the kitchen and tell me I’m not hallucinating, please?”
“The kitchen?”
Mhari finds Persephone leaning against the full-sized refrigerator with her eyes closed. “What?” she asks.
“Check out the thing in the fridge.” She steps sideways to give the other woman access.
“Okay.” It takes Mhari a little while to take inventory. Milk, a box of Coke cans, various food products. “The Mason jar?” She peers at it. “What’s that?”
The one-liter Mason jar on the shelf is full of a cloudy, turbid liquid that at first conceals her view of the contents. The thing inside looks like a pickled dead fish—about five centimeters in diameter and twenty centimeters long—but it’s banded or segmented along its length, and something about it makes her skin crawl. There are no fins, but membranous attachments dangle from its lower end. She can feel something faintly, like static on a dead radio frequency, plucking at her nerves.
Then the fish squirms and turns the tip of its head towards her, lamprey mouth-parts puckering in concentric toothy rings that scrape at the glass. She squeaks and jumps backward, fangs sliding out defensively. “Fuck!”
“Yeah.” Persephone pushes the door shut. Her face is pale and pinched. “My ward’s holding up, but it’s hot. That thing, it wants … wants to be inside someone.”
Mhari can feel it now: its flesh-hunger is slowed by the chill of the fridge but not entirely dampened, the urge to squirm and thrust, to pump deeper into a warm and yielding cavity, a chewing, eating drive to move forward ever deeper in orgasmic lust, until it swims in screaming blood and sprays eggs from every pore into the victim’s abdominal cavity—
“Gaah. I feel sick.”
“Not here. Bathroom.” Persephone leads her out of the kitchen.
Back in the living room Mhari breathes deeply for a minute, forcing her stomach to settle. It’s not fair: becoming a vampire should, she feels, have rendered her immune to feelings of queasy disgust. “What, what is that thing?”
“If I had to guess, it’s the new type of host that Schiller’s got his hands on. Johnny said the goons he and Bob took down at the camp on Dartmoor had them—segmented wormlike body and cartilaginous teeth, with added mind control capability. You’ve read the GOD GAME BLACK transcript. This is like the tongue-eating isopods, only it’s a hypercastrating parasitoid: one that lives inside its victim, eats the victim’s gonads, and repurposes their reproductive drive to spread itself. The Sleeper has a lovely library of parasite-derived biological weapons it uses to control its victims, and evidently Schiller has been helping it refine its choice of human-specific vectors. Evidently this is one he was saving for later.”
“Uh, can we kill it with fire? Like, right now?”
“I approve of your instincts, but”—Persephone freezes—“Incoming! Get in the master bedroom, go hide right now. Leave this to me.”
Because of the churning in her stomach it takes Mhari a moment to register what Persephone has just heard: that in the hall, the doorknob is turning.
* * *
Mo’s arrival at Nether Stowe House goes smoothly, despite her last-minute stage fright. Part of her discomfort, she realizes, is a side effect of her single status. She has no escort: Bob can’t be here—Schiller would recognize him instantly—and it would be inappropriately out of character for her to turn up with a boy toy. Her social unease is ancient programming instilled in childhood, a Victorian sensibility that good girls don’t go to parties on their own or bad things happen to them. So as Zero pulls up outside the front steps and a uniformed police officer steps forward to open the door for her, she manages to disguise her snarl of self-directed irritation as a smile. “Good evening, ma’am. Your invitation, please?”
“Good evening.” She pumps a little more sincerity into her smile as she hands over the card and the officer stands to attention. “At ease.” She’s still on the roster as a director at the Transhuman Police Coordination Force. The officer—he’s from the Diplomatic Protection Group at the Met, she sees, but in dress uniform and not carrying—doesn’t have to know that she’s a nonexec now, and on indefinite leave, sliding sideways into irrelevance as the Home Office digests the TPCF and replaces its original staff with their own loyalists. Might as well see what he knows, she thinks. “How’s everything shaping up this evening?” she asks as she climbs out of the Bentley.
“It’s fine so far. The perimeter’s secure, the contract staff passed their checks, and none of the VIPs have kicked off; we’re here for Number Ten and Number Eleven, and once they’ve been and gone we can pack up and go home.”
“Good luck.” She smiles again, then turns and heads towards the open front door and the uniformed but clearly civilian greeters waiting for her.
The distinguished-looking man in the thousand-dollar haircut who is greeting everyone who enters must be Schiller himself, she decides; the photos in the briefing pack don’t do him justice. He’s wearing a wire with his tuxedo, and as she approaches him he rolls out a smile that displays dentistry as expensive as a Porsche. “Dr. O’Brien, from the TPCF? I’m so pleased you could be here tonight! Wonderful to meet you, I’ve heard a lot about your agency. Perhaps we could talk later?”
Mo smiles and nods disingenuously, then says something politely noncommittal; of course TPCF will be on Schiller’s hit list, but it’s a much smaller and less important target than the Laundry, one for the mopping-up round. Another car is already drawing up outside the door and from the stance of Schiller’s companions—an ice-blonde in a designer gown and a shaven-headed mook whose dinner jacket fails to conceal his assault-course muscles—it’s somebody important. “Later,” she adds, and Schiller is already turning back to the red carpet as she slides sideways around the welcoming committee. There is no reason to be resentful. She’s definitely B-list in this glittering company, and very glad of it. Schiller has managed to rope in the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary of State for Defense, and half the cabinet (including the new Minister of Magic). Mere directors of supercop agencies and GovCos are small fry compared to the rock stars of national politics. For which she is deeply grateful. It makes her job much easier, which is to remain invisible until she’s needed.
Mo has done enough formal events in her other role as an academic—and a couple as a diplomat—to be familiar with the drill. You swipe a glass of bubbly, mingle and smile and chat politely, identify targets of interest for later, do not grimace when your fee
t remind you that you don’t normally wear high heels on marble floors for hours on end, and above all do not mistake the refreshments for hydration fluid or vitamin supplements.
The house is hopping tonight, if somewhat sedately—if you ignore the arm candy and the hospitality staff, the average age would be somewhere north of fifty—and the party has spread out through the linked rooms of the building. It’s old enough that with the exception of the grand hallways the only corridors seem to be for servants; the ballroom and the drawing room and the dining room are all linked by wide doors, currently open, and there’s a pavilion on the lawn where a band is playing. There’s a finger buffet and standing space to one side, seats and low tables for conversation to the other, and dancing in the central ballroom—although whether the pretty young things shaking their moves are hired dancers, escorts, or the children of some of the older guests is hard to tell. Mo glances at the ceiling, past the enormous chandelier and baroque cornices, and spots a musician’s gallery upstairs. As Cassie indicated, it has been turned into a discreet retreat with an overview of the dance floor.
Mo makes her way around the big public rooms, fading in to smile and chat briefly with those she wants to investigate, then stepping back gracefully and allowing them to forget her presence. She makes sure never to stand still for more than a couple of minutes, and she is on guard constantly: while her singular talent for enhanced middle-aged invisibility works perfectly face-to-face, the house is certain to be under continuous CCTV monitoring and if she slips out of character one of the supervisors might notice. This sixtyish fellow here, who is friendly enough if you make allowances for eyeballs that point thirty centimeters below your face, is the managing director of one of the bigger outsourcing contract agencies—Mo gives him an extra-ingratiating smile before she makes herself scarce and moves on—while the seventyish balding gentleman there, with a stunning Italian or Brazilian companion clinging to each of his arms like it’s their life savings, owns at least sixteen regional newspapers. That man there has something to do with investment banking, a half-familiar face from the financial pages. The party is like a Who’s Who of the new elite, the ascendant stars of the British constellation within the global capitalist firmament. Not a composer, artist, or academic among them—that’s for little people—although going by the sounds emanating from the pavilion Schiller has paid a globally renowned chanteuse for the evening.
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