by Alex White
“Okay.” Don’t stamp your feet.
“We also spoke with one of his bodyguards. He told us how you frightened him off.”
“I said I worked for you, and he knew to run.”
Robert’s smile bore more than kindness, of that much she felt certain. She wasn’t sure what his face meant, but she could imagine how the Consortium might feel about a man who fled at their mention. “I know. I assure you that none of Duke’s staff will trouble you anymore.”
“Killed the only ones that did.” Look him in the eyes.
He nodded.
She turned the card over in her hands. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“I’m on my way to negotiate a deal with your employer for the book. I’d appreciate a call if you think of anything else... or if you have any services to offer.”
She wrung her hands to still her fingers. “I don’t fuck for money.”
Robert chuckled.
“Is something funny?”
“I didn’t think you did, Miss Fiddleback. You’re a talented and unique individual. Maybe there are other problems you could help us with.” He tipped his hat and turned to leave. “Stay in touch.”
At once, the train came pouring into the station, hisses and chugs, a million screeches and clangs like the devil’s own drum corps. She’d forgotten to play her poplar beauty to kill the sound. Loxley wanted to scream or flee, but resolved to keep fixed on Robert Calhoun. He kept moving away, and she jammed her hands into her pockets to stop them flapping. Her feet rose and fell, stomping wildly, and she felt her voice rush from her throat. He spun to look at her, and she forced her gaze to lock with his. Brakes squealed, reverberating throughout the station like its iron girders were twisting apart, and Loxley kept her watering eyes locked upon his. She wouldn’t look away, not for anything.
Only when the train came sighing to rest did the Consortium agent nod and turn once more to leave. Her knees shook, but she held fast, watching him disappear into the crowd.
She surveyed the great metal beast that had come to take her away. The train looked like the ones that traversed the Hoop, but bigger, perhaps its parent. Fluted steel panels covered its exterior, reminding her of the aluminum-covered walkways of Vulcan’s Bazaar. Perhaps that was the skin this serpent had sloughed off in years past. Maybe that molting had caused it to outgrow the Hole, and that’s why this train could leave town.
She wiped a tear from her cheek, and her hand came back with the dark streak of her eyeliner. Without thinking, she scrubbed at her face.
Her right hand caught on something, and she yanked it free. Had to get the makeup off; her skin was suffocating. Then something seized her left hand. She stumbled forward, moaning as she fell to her knees to scratch away the coating on her face.
“Loxley!” Jayla stood before her, half-panicked as her gaze darted about the station. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t like the noise.”
Jayla stared at her for a good long time, and Loxley knew she must look terrifying with her face smeared this way and that.
The woman helped her up, brushing off Loxley’s legs before squaring up her shoulders. “So much for a low profile.”
“A man from the Consortium came to talk to me.”
Jayla froze. “What did he say?”
She smiled through her burning cheeks. “That I was unique and talented.”
“That you are. Come on, now.”
They hefted their luggage to a porter, who loaded it for them, then the pair stepped onto the train.
The sweet smell of old cigarettes washed over her like a forgotten friend. This was what the halls of Magic City Heights smelled like. The interior of the sleeper car had a carpet the color of split-pea soup and sky-blue walls with a maroon stripe running all along the cabin. The stripe sat close to head level, and if Loxley sunk down a bit, she could make it all look like a single line.
Jayla gave her a light push. “We’re holding up the works, baby.”
“You ever been on a train before?”
“Twice.”
Loxley nodded to the other passengers, who looked askance at her, probably because of her makeup. “Go on without me. I want to look around.”
“It’s a long train ride, Loxley. Lots to see. Why don’t you give these folks some peace for a time?”
She reluctantly agreed and followed Jayla to their cabin, where they settled in. Through the window, the station was warm and inviting with its orange lights and elegant décor. It was hard to believe that it lay at the top of such a dismal city. What would it be like when the train lurched forward? Would it scream as it did when it entered the station, or be smooth and rumbly like a car? She’d never ridden the Hoop.
Jayla leaned forward and began to dab Loxley’s face with a handkerchief, cleaning up her smudged makeup. Minutes passed as she rubbed each spot, one at a time. “I’ve got a lot of work to do here.” A tear slipped from one of her eyes.
“Are you crying?”
“A little. Do you know how long I’ve lived at the Hound’s Tail?”
Loxley thought of her sprouts. During the cold months, she had to start them inside. Sometimes, they lived when she transplanted. Other times, they died for no reason at all. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.”
Loxley frowned. “Why?”
“I’m just...” Jayla swallowed. “Are we really going to be okay?”
With a hiss, the train began to move. Loxley’s hand shot down to grip her lover’s arm, and her attention went to the window. Her breath quickened at the sudden motion, and she watched as the station began to slide away from the window. With a flurry of lights, they’d passed out and into the houses of Edgewood, then through the city limits.
The train had begun to carry her away from the husk of her old world, from her flooded diving bell. Gone was the agriculture manual, the unread Bible and Cap’s knife. She would never see Magic City Heights or Birdie or the old cooling towers with their tickling bubbles. Maybe someone was burying what was left of Nora that very moment, or maybe they already had, and Quentin had already been burned to nothing. She thought of Officer Crutchfield, rotting on a slab in a building somewhere, his ghost pacing anxiously as it awaited his cremation. Either way, the train would take her away from the bodies, from the Hound’s Tail, from Bellebrook.
Far, far away from her hidden garden at the bottom of the world.
Then they passed the last lights of the Hole, and night fell over the fields like a cloud of ink. In that murk lay the farms and the tens of thousands of souls bound to them. Never had she been so close, but she couldn’t have felt further away from what she’d dreamt. She knew the truth of it now. The farms might never be her life, though she didn’t feel sure what that could mean.
Yet, in the silver comet streaming off toward Loxley’s new days, she wasn’t alone. She rested her head against Jayla’s breast, listening to her lover’s thumping heartbeat pass in and out of phase with the clatter of the train tracks. In time, the woman’s pulse slowed, and Loxley drank in her scent.
No matter what else came later, for now, she wasn’t alone.
She gave Jayla a light, tender kiss.
“Yeah.”
When Liz Drake’s best friend vanishes, nothing can stop her nightmares. Driven by the certainty he needs her help, she crosses a continent to search for him. She finds Blake comatose in a Vancouver hospital, victim of a mysterious accident that claimed his lover’s life – in her dreams he drowns.
Blake’s new circle of artists and mystics draws her in, but all of them are lying or keeping dangerous secrets. Soon nightmare creatures stalk the waking city, and Liz can’t fight a dream from the daylight world: to rescue Blake she must brave the darkest depths of the Dreamlands.
Even the attempt could kill her, or leave her mind trapped or broken. And if she succeeds, she must face the monstrous Yellow King, whose slave Blake is on the verge of becoming forever.
‘Amanda Downum infuses
both Lovecraftian and Carcosian influences into Dreams of Shreds & Tatters, creating a variety of urban fantasy far darker and more dangerous than what we’ve been accustomed to.’
Steve Rasnic Tem, author of Deadfall Hotel
www.solarisbooks.com
Captain Jim Wedderburn has looks, style and courage. He’s adored by women, respected by men and feared by his enemies. He’s the man to fi nd out who has twisted London into this strange new world.
But in Dream London the city changes a little every night and the people change a little every day. The towers are growing taller, the parks have hidden themselves away and the streets form themselves into strange new patterns.
There are people sailing in from new lands down the river, new criminals emerging in the East End and a path spiraling down to another world.
Everyone is changing, no one is who they seem to be.
‘A real feat of the imagination, this is a really exceptional book, unlike anything I’ve ever read before.’
Chris Beckett
‘As strange and unclassifiable a novel as it’s possible to imagine, and a marvellous achievement.’
The Financial Times
www.solarisbooks.com
When physicist Robert Strong – newly unemployed and single – is offered a hundred thousand pounds for a week’s work, he’s understandably sceptical. But Victor Amos, head of the mysterious Observation Research Board, has compelling proof that the next round of experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider poses a real threat to the whole world. And he needs Robert to sabotage it.
Robert’s life is falling apart. His work at the Dark Matter Research Laboratory in Middlesbrough was taken away from him; his girlfriend, struggling to cope with the loss of her sister, has left. He returns home to Scotland, seeking sanctuary and rest, and instead starts to question his own sanity as the dead begin appearing to him, in dreams and in waking. Accepting Amos’s offer, Robert flies to Geneva, but as he infiltrates CERN, everything he once understood about reality and science, about the boundary between life and death, changes forever.
Mixing science, philosophy and espionage, Libby McGugan’s stunning debut is a thriller like no other.
www.solarisbooks.com
