London Belongs to the Alchemist (Class Heroes Book 4)

by Stephen Henning

  It was amazing, acknowledged Sam. But how long before the police arrived to bust them all? They were trespassers on a building site right next to London Bridge. It would hardly go unnoticed.

  Baz was dancing like he’d been bitten by a rabid dog. And no, please, no. Nina was gyrating next to him! She must have changed a lot in the time that Sam and James had been away. Sam wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Had everyone grown up except her?

  James was watching events, seemingly caught halfway between joining in and reserving judgement. Sam felt the same.

  “Well, we’re here,” she shouted to James. It hurt her throat to make herself heard. “What do we do now? Find whoever has got Super Drug?”

  “Yeah,” he replied in the same manner. “No harm in having a good time while we’re at it though, is there?”

  Sam gave him a don’t-push-it look.

  “I might need you to teleport me back in a bit. I need to go to the toilet.”

  “I’m not your toilet taxi service. What is it with you and toilets anyway? You’re obsessed.”

  “I’m not,” Sam snapped. “You’re a boy. You don’t understand. I’m not going here.”

  James ignored her and pointed at the boy in the skeleton outfit.

  “The DJ is pretty athletic, so he might have taken Super Drug — or Super D, as Steve called it.”

  Sam nodded in agreement.

  “Let’s stick together,” shouted James. “If there’s any trouble, I want to make sure we can both get out. Steve and Nina too. We can’t leave without them.”

  “You’ll have to drag them out,” observed Sam, looking at Nina, who was flinging her hair from side to side until Sam thought her friend’s head would snap off.

  ***

  Sam quickly discovered the flaw in James’s plan.

  Asking around about Super D was not an option. Nobody was interested in talking — not about anything. People just wanted to dance, drink, take substances and scream. On the whole, people were friendly, but only interested in you if you were moving your body.

  “I can see why Steve likes this,” James shouted in Sam’s ear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this is everything the school disco wasn’t. Steve said he doesn’t want to keep talking about the bus bomb, he just wants to live for now. Well, this is now!”

  Sam nodded. She was about to reply, when the DJ’s voice cut across the music.

  “I am not happy, people,” he announced, playfully, still in that robotic, modulated tone.

  A collective roar went up from the throng.

  “Not happy. There’s people here not dancing!”

  He was rewarded by a predictable chorus of mock disapproval.

  “And we need everyone here moving, don’t we?” asked the DJ, this time getting a collective affirmative.

  “The problem is, people, my heart is broken.” The current tune seamlessly changed to something with violins, mixed in with slow drumbeats.

  Sam laughed. The guy was obviously good at playing the crowd and they were eating out of his hand.

  “There’s this honey that I’ve got my eye on,” the DJ explained. “And she won’t dance for me.”

  The crowd booed, theatrically.

  “Will you ask her to dance for me, guys?” asked the DJ.

  There was a big cheer of support.

  “Thank you guys, you are the best. Please make her feel welcome ’cos I’ve not seen her before, but she is like an angel, and she’s right there.”

  Sam’s enjoyment of the banter turned to horror as one of the big searchlights swept in an arc and its beam landed on her.

  Sam’s blood ran cold and she really wanted to pee, which she just about managed to avoid. She tried opening her mouth but embarrassment had dried her throat and she could only stare into the blinding light.

  The crowd was cheering and whistling.

  Sam backed out of the searchlight but it followed her. She looked at James. He was dumbstruck too.

  “Beautiful girl, would you care to dance?” asked the DJ, in a courtly fashion.

  Sam shook her head and was grateful for James taking a step forward so he was next to her.

  “That must be your brother. You look alike,” observed the DJ.

  Sam winced. Too many of those comments and James was likely to blow his top and start a fight.

  The crowd had started chanting, “Dance! Dance! Dance!” over and over.

  It may have been meant in a friendly, fun way, but to Sam’s ears it was threatening. She felt vulnerable and she hated it. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be crowding her. People’s faces kaleidoscoped around her. The chanting sounded more like taunting, as if she was in a circle of bullies in the playground.

  “My honey is a party virgin,” announced the DJ, “so give her some room people. And I think she deserves a present. Something I don’t give out to just anybody.”

  The chanting transformed into a big cheer. Sam couldn’t work out what was happening because she wasn’t tall enough to see over the people crowding around her. Her first indication of what was going on was when the throng parted to let two of the dancers through. A man with well-defined muscles and a lithe girl, both in skeleton suits. The girl was carrying a pink water bottle, which she held out for Sam.

  Sam took hold cautiously and just looked at it.

  The girl nearest to her said, “You are just so lucky! Drink it.” The girl was wide-eyed, almost manic, like a cat at dusk.

  “Give my girl some room, party people,” implored the DJ. “What’s your name, angel?”

  Sam looked about her nervously. James remained at her side, clearly trying to work out if he should be hitting somebody or not.

  “Sam,” said Sam, trying to bring this to a close as soon as possible.

  “Sam!” shouted out a boy, passing on the name back to the DJ.

  “Sam,” echoed the DJ. “Big shout for my girl, Sam,” he instructed and the crowd responded. Sam was so close to begging James that he teleport them home, right now, but she held her nerve.

  “Sam, baby. That drink in your hand will change your life. Well, for a few hours. Have some and you’ll be queen of the prom.”

  “Drink, drink, drink,” chanted the crowd, closing in on her.

  Chapter 5

  Sam smiled, fighting shyness and terror. She was pretty sure that her superpowered constitution would fight off anything that was in the bottle. If it was some kind of nasty street drug, then she should be immune to any long-term effects.

  But she didn’t want the risk that it might affect her judgement and she did something she badly regretted. A sky-high superhero was not a pleasant prospect. If it was Super D in the bottle, then presumably it would have no effect on her at all, but she didn’t want to risk that, either. It could overload her system completely.

  “No, thank you,” she said firmly, shaking her head.

  The crowd and DJ Alchemy assumed she was joking, or perhaps they just didn’t hear, but they kept calling for her to drink. Sam knew there were times when she was very naive and that she had what her friends called ‘blonde moments’, but she also knew her own mind. There was no way anybody was going to pressure her to do anything she didn’t want to do, no matter who they were or how many of them.

  She shook her head and held out the bottle to the girl dancer, trying to give it back.

  The dancer looked surprised. Obviously nobody had turned it down before.

  In that moment of hesitation, another hand reached out from the pressing throng and grabbed the bottle.

  It was the manic girl who had spoken to Sam. She fumbled with the top of the bottle, thrust it to her lips and drank greedily.

  Another hand then snatched it from her, this time a boy Sam’s age, dressed in a white vest, skinny jeans and a trilby hat. No sooner had he drunk from the bottle than it was gone again, now lost from Sam’s sight in the crowd.

  James gently took her arm.

  “Don’t make a fuss, S
is, but let’s just walk,” he shouted, leading her away from the pack. People had lost interest in her now, anyway. The searchlight seemed to be trying to follow the bottle, which was bouncing from person to person like a hot potato.

  The noise was deafening as DJ Alchemy cranked up the volume even further, and the noise from the crowd was off the scale.

  “I should have just kept hold of that bottle,” said Sam.

  “It’s ok,” James reassured her. “There was nothing you could do. And this way we’ll find out whether it’s Super D or not.”

  James was right. And they didn’t have long to wait.

  The girl and the boy who had swigged from the bottle first were breaking free of the crowd. They were ruthlessly pushing people out of the way and the victims were swept aside as though they were rag dolls. The girl was screaming and the boy was laughing as they ran, jumped and clambered over the mob to reach the side of the building that overlooked the river.

  At the same time, another lad was busy kicking at one of the pillars that were dotted around the room. He was succeeding in gouging out ever-larger chunks of concrete. He looked around to see who was watching and, encouraged by the applause he was receiving, proceeded to demolish the pillar using his feet, his fists and his head.

  Sam hoped that the pillar wasn’t vital to holding up the ceiling. She turned back to the running couple. They were trying to peer through a taped-up window.

  A breakaway crowd had formed around them and were chanting:

  “Do it! Do it! Do it!”

  Hurriedly, the couple stripped down to their underwear.

  “This is like a car crash,” yelled James. “What are they going to do?”

  He got his answer only seconds later. The couple gestured for the crowd to give them space, then they held hands, ran at the window and jumped straight through it.

  Sam had no idea if they made it as far as the Thames or not, and whether Super D would protect them if they hadn’t.

  The crowd cheered.

  A whole bunch of boys, stripped to the waist, were swinging from the scaffolds in the ceiling. Everyone was clutching a bottle of something or other, drinking from it or throwing it. A girl picked up one of the huge bass speakers and held it high above her head with ease.

  “Well, at least we know they have got Super D. Now what do we do?” asked James.

  “The DJ is the one giving it out,” replied Sam. “Let’s ask him where he got it.”

  Which was easier said than done, thought Sam, as the DJ was happily engrossed in playing tracks and dancing, and appeared to be lost in a world of his own.

  ***

  Sam and James pushed their way through the revellers until they reached the area in front of the stage.

  “Hey,” shouted Sam. “Hey!” She started waving her arms to try and attract the DJ’s attention, but as that was exactly what everybody else was doing, it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t notice her.

  Sam kept calling out, but to no avail.

  “This is all building up to the big event, people,” announced the DJ, mysteriously.

  What was the ‘big event’? wondered Sam.

  “It’s coming soon,” he continued, playfully. “And we’re all going to be there. Things are going to change in this city. The streets will be paved with gold!”

  The crowd cheered and began chanting ‘London belongs to us.’ It seemed to be some kind of anthem. Suddenly Sam was assuaged by a strong, sickly smell, like unwashed bodies but worse.

  “That is rank,” James shouted in her ear. “Like Mr Feral in Witches Wood.”

  Sam looked disapproving but the party was too loud to reply. She knew what he meant, though. She and James had come across a man living rough in a wood near to their grandparents’ farm. James had unkindly nicknamed him Mr Feral. But there was no doubt he did whiff a bit, and so did this place.

  As Sam watched, a huge guy in a tight black T-shirt, with muscles bigger than her body, came up beside DJ Alchemy and tapped him on the shoulder. He jerked a thumb outside and mouthed something to him.

  The DJ nodded, grabbed the man’s hand in a gesture of solidarity and comradeship, then the man left the stage.

  “Party people, we have gatecrashers,” announced DJ Alchemy, to a roar from the crowd. “The police have found us again. Don’t know how,” he added, laughing. “Perhaps if we’re all really quiet they’ll go away?”

  The whole place erupted into cheers, catcalls, laughter and enthusiastic clapping.

  “Let’s hear it for the police,” called the DJ, and started playing a mash up of TV police serial theme tunes.

  “I don’t think the police want us to party,” said the DJ, and the crowd started booing again.

  “So let’s just ignore them and carry on. And just in case they want to come in uninvited, who’d like a little drink?”

  Everyone roared a collective ‘yes’. DJ Alchemy started hurling more bottles out into the crowd, resulting in a mass scramble.

  Sam groaned. She just had a sense of doom that, in a party with over a thousand lunatics, she and James would be the ones to get arrested. They would be hauled up in front of the whole school and shamed for being at an illegal rave, which she didn’t even want to attend in the first place.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she shouted in James’s ear.

  “Ok, but let’s find Steve and Nina, first.”

  Which seemed like a near-impossible task amid the sheer number of people surrounding them. There was also the added difficulty of picking out a face when strobe lighting made it difficult to recognize her own brother barely a few centimetres away. James was right, though, they couldn’t leave their friends behind to be arrested, or worse. And what about AJ and Stanley? And Steve’s brother, Baz? Sam felt responsible for them all. The sulky girl could take her chances though, she thought, unkindly.

  James tapped Sam on the shoulder and indicated for her to follow him.

  ***

  They struggled through the crowd towards the row of windows that faced the Thames. Sam got elbowed repeatedly in the face and ribs as people jumped up and down around her. There was further indignity as drinks were spilled over her in three separate incidents. Her hair felt sticky and disgusting, her lovely red coat was stained and smelly and then she got a cigarette burn on her hand. This was gross.

  James, annoyingly, had managed to remain unscathed.

  “What happened to you?” he asked, when they made it to the taped-up windows. Sam just shook her head resignedly. James looked angry, like he was prepared to go and hit whoever had done it.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said, and pulled the tape off the nearest window to deflect his attention.

  Two police vans had managed to navigate their way to the front of the building and were parked in the narrow space outside the boarded-off area of the building site. Sam counted over a dozen police officers, some in high-visibility jackets, others assembling with body armour and riot shields. Blue lights flashed and reflected on the wet pavements outside. The music was so loud that it drowned out any sirens that might have been wailing.

  More police officers were arriving all the time and Sam finally noticed that one woman was facing the front door, holding a megaphone. Her words were also obliterated by the music. As Sam watched, the woman had to throw herself out of the way hastily as a chunk of masonry came crashing through a window and landed where the woman had been standing.

  Then something whizzed past Sam’s ear and smashed through the window beside her. Sam leapt aside in shock, and was steadied by her brother. She looked around to see where the missile had come from. Two lads were looking right through her, eyes shining with excitement. One was holding a lump of concrete ready to hurl, the other was recovering his balance having just unleashed his own missile.

  James took a step towards the lads and Sam knew what he was thinking. She grabbed hold of his arm and restrained him.

  The second lad threw his rock and it smashed through the next window
in the row.

  Sam stepped back to the wall and looked down on the street outside. Partygoers were spilling out of the building and charging at the police.

  “We’ve got to stop them before they hurt someone,” shouted Sam.

  “How?” James bellowed back at her. “Let’s just get home before I hurt someone.”

  “But they’re fighting.”

  “We can’t get caught here. We’re getting Steve and Nina; then we’re going.”

  The party had gone to hell. If people weren’t fighting, they were blissfully lost in a dance trance. It wouldn’t have surprised Sam if the building itself was reduced to rubble by the morning.

  There was only one way that they might be able to find Steve and Nina in this madhouse.

  She grabbed hold of her brother’s sleeve and led him away from the window as a mob was forming, smashing the glass and chanting at the police down below. They picked their way back to the stage and together they climbed up on top of a packing crate, then wobbled their way over opened boxes of bottles towards the DJ booth. Sam could feel the full force of the music that was being blasted out by the huge speakers pounding through her body. Her ears hurt, she wondered if she might go deaf, and her bones felt like they might vibrate to pieces. When she looked at her hands, they were covered in blood, although on closer investigation she realized it must be somebody else’s. She had no idea where that had come from.

  The muscle man who had spoken to the DJ earlier put a big meaty hand out to halt her progress. Sam gave him a measured shove which sent the guy staggering backwards. The crowd around the stage, who were inexplicably still dancing, gave her a big cheer.

  Up close, Sam could see that the DJ was indeed just a boy, not much older than herself. He had removed his skeleton hood and now Sam could see his face. He was black; had short hair; soft, good-looking features and an expression that ranged between surprise and delight.

  “My honey is on the stage,” he announced into his headset microphone, before Sam ripped it off him and held it close to her mouth.

  “Yes, she is,” said Sam, and could finally hear her own words as they were repeated through the speakers. It sounded weird because the voice modulator was now changing her speech patterns into that harsh robotic cadence. “Now where’s Nina? Nina? Steve? Steve Roadhouse, are you out there?”