The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three (DOG-FACED GODS TRILOGY)

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘Does he suspect anything?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Mr Dublin said. ‘With him it’s hard to tell.’

  ‘We should move against him – before he makes moves to attack us.’

  ‘Not yet.’ Mr Dublin sipped his coffee. And sometimes warriors were like children; they certainly never understand the complexities of politics. ‘Let him find the emissary. Right now, he won’t be looking to fight – he’ll be looking to consolidate. He’s not a fool. He knows he’s in danger.’

  ‘What about the First?’

  ‘He’s moved him.’ Mr Dublin was annoyed about that. The old man in the bed was a gibbering fool, so why had Mr Bright decided to hide him away? Perhaps he didn’t want the others to see him – that would make sense. But it didn’t actually matter; Mr Dublin had filmed the visit after the First’s awakening and when he was ready to make his move against Mr Bright, he would send it to all of the cohorts. Mr Bright would be finished. He hoped there would be no bloodshed. Deception had never been part of his nature, and even though he knew he was doing what was best for them all, he had not rested well since his decision to go against Mr Bright.

  ‘I thought we were going to use him for the Experiment?’ Mr Escobar’s eyes were dark knots of wood and his skin was leather. Mr Dublin tried to remember what he had looked like before he became small. Fierceness was all his memory could muster.

  ‘We were, but on reflection, I doubt he would be of any use. He has no Glow – none that we could see anyway.’ He shivered slightly and saw Mr Escobar’s frown deepen. It was an unsettling thought for all of them.

  ‘So what are we to do? Sit and twiddle our thumbs?’

  ‘No.’ Mr Dublin slid a thin file across the table. ‘I think we might try this man in the Experiment.’

  Mr Escobar opened the folder and looked at the photograph. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s Mr Bright’s pet project. He’s the bloodline.’

  ‘So the rumours of the boy were true.’ Mr Escobar looked up sharply.

  ‘Mr Bright still has the boy – I don’t know where. In fact we don’t even know if the boy is alive. The records are unclear.’

  ‘And this man?’

  ‘His name is Cassius Jones. He’s out there somewhere. We need to find him before anyone else does.’

  ‘And how do we do that?’

  ‘We wait and we watch. He’s a fighter. You’d probably quite like him. He’ll be coming after Mr Bright.’ He paused. ‘He’ll be coming after all of us.’

  ‘And you think he can find the Walkways?’

  Mr Dublin gazed out over London. Everyone wanted certainties. His sympathy for Mr Bright was growing. How had he managed everything for so long after the First started sleeping? Yes, he’d had Mr Solomon for a while, but he too had changed, and a long time before his madness came. How those glorious three, the shining lights who led them all the way here, had fallen. It made him ache inside. Perhaps they were fighting a losing battle – perhaps they always had been. He had never thought the day would come when he wanted to go home, but now with the Dying, the First’s degradation and no doubt imminent demise, and the rage and rot that was filling the world they’d been so proud of, he ached for the heat of home. He ached to be truly himself. He was tired of being small.

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘He’s of the bloodline. If an emissary has found the way here but we can’t go back, then the only logical conclusion is that someone has locked the Walkways outwards. He must have done it to keep us out, so perhaps if it is His own blood trying to get through He will open them – He will know.’

  ‘He always knew everything.’ For the first time, Mr Dublin heard nervousness in Mr Escobar’s gruff voice.

  Yes, and there was the downside of home: He was there.

  ‘Well, let’s deal with Him if and when we have to.’

  Mr Dublin smiled. He needed to lift this mood before Mr Escobar left. He pulled open a desk drawer. ‘I have something for you.’ He held out the item hanging on a slim chain. He had taken it from around the neck of the wrecked Mr Bellew. ‘Wear it well. It’s our history.’ He smiled. ‘Welcome to the Inner Cohort.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dr Cornell hadn’t slept in two nights, not since Alan Jones’ boy had visited. Even when his brain was at its feverish worst, he knew that was too long for a man of his age to go without rest – it was too long for a man of any age. That level of tiredness allowed the shadows to creep in at the edges of his mind; the demon paranoia he knew was always somewhere back there now had full rein with his friends fear and doubt.

  During the long hours he’d reordered piles of paper to try and keep his mind clear. At some point he’d cried a little. Not for the first time he wondered if they’d put something in his water to keep him just the wrong side of confused – a touch of LSD? No, it wouldn’t be anything so basic. He couldn’t begin to imagine the kind of drugs they must have at their disposal.

  He had dozed in his office chair for an hour or so at some point between the grip of the dark night and dawn, and awakened with a jolt – the kind that made you feel like you’d been somewhere other than in your body. That disturbed him; the idea that he could have left his body and all his amassed information, both completely unprotected. And what if he’d left his body and couldn’t get back in? What then?

  He sipped his coffee and looked down at his gnarled, ageing hand. He didn’t recognise it as his own. Time passed so quickly. For a blissful moment, the demons fell silent and he was aware of his own inadequacies. He was in a battle for his sanity, he knew that. In his clearer moments, he wondered if perhaps he was experiencing the onset of dementia. So many years spent living in fear, trying to get to the bottom of what might possibly be the world’s biggest secret – no, was the world’s biggest secret – had taken their toll. His mind had been pushed to the limits even before natural wear and tear set in, and the shame of being decried as a lunatic had gone some way towards turning him into one in truth.

  The knots on the back of his hand were like those in his mind: calcified. Damaged. He looked again at the stacks of paper around him. Alan Jones’ son had been here – Cassius, the eldest, the man on the run. He rubbed his tired eyes. Or had it been him at all? Had it been one of them? How would he ever learn to tell the difference? Perhaps it had been Cassius Jones, but maybe he was working with them. Maybe the whole murder charge was part of some elaborate plan not yet revealed. He sighed. It was exhausting trying to work out all the possibilities. He looked for links in everything, because they were everywhere, controlling everything. At some point over the years, he’d lost the ability to believe in any random turn of events. Perhaps that was his madness.

  He stared at the mass of papers and documents that surrounded him. Somewhere in those piles there were answers, and yet every step forward raised more questions. He had been on this quest so long that he’d forgotten more questions than he’d ever had answers, though the basic queries still remained, haunting him: who, why, how? And how much longer? The only two things he knew for certain were that they weren’t like us, and they’d been here for ever. The who and the why were responsible for starting his sanity cracking, he knew that. He was slipping through the gaps. He just needed to find the answers, then make people believe. He needed there to be a point to all these years spent hoarding. He thought he might cry again.

  A sudden bang on the front door made him drop his coffee cup, spilling the lukewarm drink all over his trousers.

  ‘Dr Cornell?’ It was a rough voice, demanding. He moved cautiously into the hallway and stared at the door with dread.

  ‘If you’re from the council,’ he started, happy to hear indignation rather than fear, ‘then you can’t come in. You have no right—’

  A crash came from behind him and he turned, startled. At the other end of the corridor, a booted foot could be seen as it kicked the back door open. Dr Cornell mewled slightly. It had finally happened: they had come for him. He looked back at the front door. He
couldn’t get out that way – even if there weren’t men on the other side it would take him too long to undo all the bolts and locks. Why hadn’t he taken the same measures with the back door? What had they done, climbed over the back wall? The gate was long gone, he’d bricked that up years ago. His stomach turned to water. A heavy figure came towards him, cutting through the stream of sunshine from the back.

  ‘You can’t be in here, this is private prop—’ He didn’t get to finish the sentence as a thick arm wrapped around his thin neck and covered his mouth.

  ‘It’s like a fucking a junkyard out there.’ A second man walked towards him through the kitchen, pouring liquid from a small bottle onto a piece of cloth. He didn’t look at Dr Cornell but at the brute who was holding him so firmly. ‘I told you to wait for me. Here.’ He handed over the cloth. Dr Cornell’s heart was racing so fast he thought it would burst. His mind was pure white panic as a hand pressed the cloth against his mouth. He tried not to breathe, he really did, but still the world started to blacken at the edges and his head swam.

  In front of him, the man in the black leather coat put the bottle back in his pocket and peered into the study.

  ‘Fuck me,’ he muttered. ‘We’re going to need a bigger van.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘I brought doughnuts.’ Hask closed the door of the small conference room behind him and smiled. ‘Cliché, I know, but also very tasty and marginally less messy on a suit than an almond croissant first thing in the morning.’

  He was glad they’d found a space away from the hubbub. Ramsey and Armstrong both had dark rings around their eyes and neither was standing as tall as normal. He couldn’t blame them for their tiredness. The news of Blackmore’s poisoning had broken two days ago, and there were plenty of accusations, spoken and otherwise, flying around. If it hadn’t been Bowman or one of his criminal associates who had organised the murder, then perhaps it had been the police, protecting themselves. That wasn’t something the public would have a problem believing, not after everything that had happened in recent months, and it was an accusation that Paddington Green Police Station really didn’t need.

  ‘I could do without being the lead in this case,’ Charles Ramsey grumbled. ‘There’s enough shit going on here as it is – and now the pressure’s back on to find Jones. As if I’m some kind of magician.’

  ‘Maybe they think Paddington has something to prove,’ Armstrong said.

  ‘Yeah, and they surely do,’ Ramsey agreed, ‘but why pick on the clean officers to do it?’

  It was good to see that even if they weren’t exactly bonding, Armstrong and Ramsey were on the same side.

  ‘No, it’s my fault,’ Hask said cheerfully. ‘They need me on it, and I told the Commissioner that I wanted to work with you rather than start afresh with new people. Plus they’re already paying me to consult on the elusive Mr Jones’ case, so I suppose they think they might keep the bill down if I don’t have to factor in travel time between stations. You can thank me later.’ He smiled, and then rubbed his hands together before pulling a doughnut out of the box. ‘So, what have we got?’

  Armstrong stared at him for a moment and then sighed. ‘We’ve been through all the cases of Strain II diagnosed in the past six months. There’s no one coming up who fits our man’s description, not from the corporations that insist on it, the hospitals, the private clinics, or even those Portakabin testing centres that turn up in the estates. And since it’s illegal to do anonymous testing now, I don’t know where else we can check. I’ve got some people going back another six months – maybe we’ll find him there.’

  ‘You can have them look,’ Hask washed down his doughnut with coffee, ‘and it’s worth doing just so you look like you’re ticking all the boxes, but I doubt you’ll come up with anything. This spate of attacks – how long has it been going on, do you think?’

  ‘Michaela Wheeler said she was infected at the end of October,’ Ramsey said. ‘But he was working with the junkies and homeless before then. Let’s say the beginning of October as a ballpark date.’

  ‘So two to three months. He should be well within your original six-month range for diagnosis. This man is arrogant. And he’s bitter. He would have started “spreading God’s word”, or his word, or both if he sees himself as the not-so-good Lord, pretty soon after he learned of his own illness. He can call it what he wants, but this is a case of I’m going down and you’re all coming with me. That kind of thinking kicks in fast – it’s a knee-jerk reaction. If he’d been choosing particular targets, people he had personal grudges against, for example, then I might say different, but I’d put my money on this man getting to work quickly. Despite his apparent cool, he’s very, very angry, even if he’s conned himself into believing that he’s above that.’

  ‘So you’re saying he knows he’s got the bug but he hasn’t been diagnosed?’ Ramsey frowned.

  ‘He’s a smart,’ Hask reached for a second doughnut, ‘and apparently sophisticated man. He definitely has an ego. Perhaps he self-diagnosed.’

  ‘I don’t buy it.’ Ramsey shook his head. ‘The early symptoms could be down to any number of diseases – after all, no one dies from AIDS; you die from something else that your body can’t fight. I don’t care who this guy is, he’d have got himself checked out. Surely the bigger the ego, the less likely he’d think it would be that he would have something terrible like Strain II?’

  ‘Good point.’ Ramsey was smart, Hask thought. ‘But he didn’t get checked here. Could he have done it out of the country?’

  ‘There is another way he could have known – something else I’ve been checking out.’

  Hask and Ramsey both looked over at the young sergeant.

  ‘What if someone he knew got diagnosed as infected? Someone he’d slept with but he’d thought to be clean?’

  Hask slowly nodded. ‘That’s possible. And if he’d started getting symptoms, then he’d know what it was. I wonder if he’s privately wealthy? It’s a tall ask, but you might want to check with those corporations that do the bug tests, find out whether they’ve had any high-ranking staff member suddenly quit with no warning.’ He smiled at the sergeant. ‘Good reasoning on the diagnosis, but I’m not sure how much it helps us.’

  ‘You might be wrong there.’ Armstrong shuffled through a stack of papers in a thick file. He glanced up. ‘I had another comparison done. Thank fuck we’ve got city-wide co-operation because this would have taken bloody months otherwise. A grimmer one.’

  ‘Go on,’ Ramsey said.

  ‘I got a list of all the Strain II deaths in the past six months and then cross-referenced it with the diagnoses. We know that the bug he’s infecting people with is somehow far more aggressive – not a mutation, according to the doctors, but somehow more virulent. Don’t ask me to explain the science – in fact, don’t ask them to explain the science, because they don’t know how it works either – but that seems to be the case, even if it isn’t killing our man quite as fast.’

  ‘Stick to the point, Armstrong,’ Ramsey said. ‘My brain is too tired for tangents.’

  ‘Sorry. My point is this: anyone infected by him, before he started doing it wilfully or since, has a much shorter life expectancy than a normal Strain II case. With normal Strain II, you have maybe a year, or eighteen months if you’re in good heath, right? But these new cases are deteriorating fast, and on a daily basis. Even Michaela Wheeler, who was both young and healthy, isn’t expected to last beyond January.’

  ‘I take it you’ve found something?’ Hask asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Armstrong pulled a photo out of the file. ‘I think I might have done. But you’re not going to like it.’ He placed the picture in the middle of the table where both Ramsey and Hask could see it. Pale blond hair falling over a slightly chubby, cherubic face.

  ‘He’s just a kid,’ Ramsey said, not quite hiding the fear in voice.

  ‘Joey Brannigan. Eight years old. He died of Strain II two weeks ago.’

  ‘Jesus
.’

  ‘Carry on,’ Hask said. His mind was ticking over, already a step ahead. ‘I’m presuming this story gets worse?’

  ‘Yep. Joey Brannigan’s a care-home kid; he was taken by Social Services when he was five after running away from an abusive family home. He showed early signs of TB, but other than that he was clean. He was fostered when he was six, but got put back into the system seven months ago when the foster mother got pregnant. He was put into a private care home in Lambeth. Social Services tested him on the way in: his lungs were weak, a result of that early TB, but he had put on weight and other than that was looking healthy. When he suddenly fell very ill in October they gave him a routine Hep-and-TB test and bang, there it was: Strain II.’

  ‘How?’ Ramsey asked.

  ‘At first the care home manager tried to claim that his previous test must have been misread, or mixed up with someone else’s, but Social Services weren’t having any of that. Apparently they’d had concerns about the welfare of the children in the—’

  ‘—Happy Smiles Care Home?’ Ramsey broke in. ‘Caroline Hurke’s place?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Have I missed something?’ Hask asked.

  ‘You must have,’ Ramsey said. ‘It was all over the news: she was arrested a month ago and charged with supplying minors. She ran a small home for difficult children in the state’s care.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Armstrong said, ‘the alarm bells started ringing because the children all became too manageable: turned out they were terrified – being abused, and kept mildly sedated to stop them kicking up about it. Little Joe’s test results finally made Social Services sit up and take notice, and once they started looking more closely they discovered all the kids showed physical evidence of sexual abuse.’ He swallowed, hard. ‘They were all under ten.’