Moonlands

by Steven Savile

  Smirke stood in the doorway and ushered them into his office. He was skeletally thin. His high cheekbones and sunken cheeks made him look positively gaunt. He was dressed in a sharp pin-striped suit which hung on him uncomfortably—as though he had left the coat hanger in the jacket when he had put it on, Ashley thought, watching him walk back to his desk once they were all in and seated. He didn't walk, actually, she amended, he lolloped, as though his bones were made of jelly. Lolloped. That was such a great word. It made her smile when she said it to herself: Lolloped. Lolloped. Lolloped. Say it often enough and it lost all meaning.

  As he passed her chair, Ashley caught the reek of pipe tobacco.

  He coughed once, a deep, phlegmy hack of a cough, as he shuffled the papers and made a show of settling down. Smirke opened his mouth to smile, revealing a row of nicotine-yellowed teeth that looked like dilapidated tombstones in an ancient graveyard. The man would never be poster boy for British dentistry, Ashley thought, taking her headphones off when her mother nudged her.

  The lawyer put the papers down on his desk and leaned forward on pointy elbows. "We are gathered here today to witness the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Elspeth Grimm, who sadly left us this last week," Smirke said, adjusting his spectacles. "She left quite specific instructions on who was—and wasn't—to attend today," he chuckled softly at that, as though it was the funniest thing in the world. "I would like to thank you all on my client's behalf. I am sure you'll appreciate she was a quite unique woman, and I know I will miss her greatly. Now, if you will bear with me, I'd like to read the relevant passages that deal with the various bequests Elspeth has left to each of you."

  Understandably, there were no objections. The vultures had gathered to claim what was theirs, or at least what they hoped was theirs.

  Ashley listened as Smirke dished out gifts like some macabre Santa Claus who needed someone to die before he could climb down the chimney. He read slowly and methodically, without any particular inflection or intonation, as though thoroughly bored by the proceedings. And perhaps he was. Ashley was. But mercifully Smirke had already read through more than half of the bequests already. "To my beloved Zoë, I leave my pearls, so that she might always feel like a princess," Smirke said, which earned a chuckle from a woman who looked like anything but a princess. "And to Frank, loyal, hardworking Frank, I leave the sum of five thousand pounds on the understanding that the money is used to procure the tools of his trade, so that he might finally become his own boss and create great things." A man with gnarled construction workers hands nodded thoughtfully. "To my dear, dear friend Guerin, I leave you one scared duty," Smirke coughed slightly, then opened his desk draw to pull out what looked like a dictionary. "Uphold the Concord at all costs." The bear nodded grimly as he walked forward to collect the book.

  It was a battered copy of an incredibly thick book. Gilded letters on the spine identified it as Deutsche Grammatik, by Jacob Grimm.

  It seemed like an odd gift to leave someone, but old books could be worth a lot of money, especially rare first editions. Guerin handled it with the utmost care as he walked back to his seat.

  Smirke looked around them room, his gaze settling on Ashley's mum. "To Meghan," he said, slowly, "I leave my rare 1889 Patek Philippe perpetual calendar moonphase minute repeater. That's a pocket watch, if you are wondering, dearest, because I know how obsessed with time you are." Again this earned a chuckle from people around the room who knew Ashley's mother. "And lastly, to my favourite niece-who-isn't-my-niece, Ashley, dear Ashley, I leave to you your past and your future, both so much more exciting than the present. This is your inheritance, my dear, I trust you will come to understand just how precious you are and how I wish I could have been around to see you grow up to be the woman you are meant to be."

  Ashley looked at her mother, then at the lawyer, confused. She had no idea what that was supposed to mean until Smirke took an ivory envelope from his desk drawer and bade her to come forward to collect it.

  She took it from him and quickly sat back down.

  She didn't open it.

  "That concludes the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Elspeth Grimm, thank you for coming ladies and gentlemen," Smirke said, bringing the proceedings to a close. Grimm? Ashley thought, realising the book couldn't be a coincidence, could it? Two Grimm's, Elspeth and Jacob. Did that mean she was related to the brothers?

  People began to stand up, pushing back their chairs and scraping them on the parquet floor.

  There was something in the envelope.

  It felt heavy. Ashley quickly looked to see if her mum was looking, but she was chatting to one of the more distant members of the dysfunctional family tree. What have we got here then, Ashley thought, as she tore it open. A curious looking key felt out into the palm of her hand. She clenched her fist around it quickly. The only other thing inside the envelope was a small innocuous looking ivory coloured business card. She fished it out of the envelope and looked at it. There was an address—723 Clerkenwell Rise, City of London—stamped on it in gold foil. Nothing else. Did the key open the door? Had she been left her own apartment in the city? That seemed too good to be true, so almost certainly wasn't. Besides, it didn't look like a door key. It was small, like the key to a secret diary or a little treasure chest. There was, of course, only one way to find out what the key actually opened, and that entailed going to 723 Clerkenwell Rise to see.

  Ashley started to unbuckle her satchel, intending to put the key and the card inside. As she reached in, her fingers brushed across the surface of the card and she felt a slight embossing above the address. She had missed it at first because it wasn't gilded. She tilted the card to the light, back and forth slowly, angling it toward the window as she tried to catch the hidden message so that it would cast a shadow.

  Box 111.

  So it definitely wasn't a front door key all of her own, to her very own apartment, not that she had really thought it was. Auntie Elspeth wasn't rich like that. Ashley could still remember going to her house once and opening the cupboard to find it full of tea bags and sugar. Just tea bags and sugar. Thousands of tea bags and tiny sachets of sugar. Her mum had explained that sometimes Auntie Elspeth got confused and thought it was still wartime and rationing was in force. Ashley smiled at the memory.

  It was the key to a deposit box of some sort.

  Box 111.

  Which, Ashley reasoned, meant Auntie Elspeth had left her something she didn't want anyone else in the room knowing about. Perhaps it was her secret stash of chocolate and nylons? Suddenly Ashley felt an overwhelming sadness.

  Making sure the envelope was empty she scrunched it up and tossed it into the wastepaper bin, then slipped the key and the ivory business card into her satchel and buckled it up. Once upon a time the satchel had been a ridiculously expensive DKNY handbag, one of Meghan's Prada cast-offs, and an equally pricy Gucci raincoat her mum had brought home for her. Ashley had taken the sewing scissors to them all, cutting them up and then stitching them back together into Frankenstein's satchel. There were no labels to be seen, and Ashley loved her homemade satchel, even though several of the world's leading designer's would have turned in their graves if they ever saw it.

  "So what did you get then, darling," Meghan Hawthorne asked, as she rooted around in her own designer handbag for her phone.

  "Just a card," Ashley said, which wasn't entirely true but wasn't an outright lie either.

  "Well, that was nice of her." She seemed distracted. The phone was already vibrating in her hand. "Sorry, kiddo, I have to rush off to put out a fire. Seems like one of the guitarists is throwing a hissy fit and they need someone to mediate. That'd be me. Who said life was all glamour, eh? Can you get yourself to school?"

  Ashley smiled. "You mean like every other morning? Course I can, mum."

  "Great, see you tonight, kiddo. Hopefully dad'll be back when you get home."

  "See you tonight." She gave her a peck on the cheek, secretly glad she would get to go
to school by herself.

  She headed back to school for gym, intending to check out the house on Clerkenwell Rise before going home that evening.

  FOUR

  Sheep

  In Regent's Park, surrounded by curious geese and herons, Blackwater Blaze writhed around on the ground in agony. At first the birds pecked at him curiously, but as the transformation took hold they scattered into the air.

  The sun had risen above the treeline, forcing the change on his body.

  He wasn't used to the power the sun had over him in this world.

  In the Moonlands he had control over his flesh, here, he was coming—painfully—to understand, the shift could be forced upon him by the sun.

  His spine contracted and straightened, twisting each and every bone until it cracked, and then some more so that each crack fractured and shattered until every bone in his body was broken. It was agony. Blaze tore at the earth, ripping his claws out as they stuck in the hard ground. His bones slowly began to reset and the agonies subsided. His teeth snapped at the air, each snarl becoming more painfully human as the transformation took hold. Even as he chomped and bit his jawline changed, the bones contracting, the change stealing everything that was lupine about the Wolfen's face. Every bristle burned as it shrivelled in the sunlight, leaving his hide raw and bare. His tail smouldered, the fur gone, leaving only smears of charcoal behind. And as the sun rose, the daylight seared Blaze's hide, causing it to crack and crumble and flake until only the soft raw pink flesh beneath remained. Blackwater Blaze lay naked, curled up in a foetal ball, surrounded by birds. His eyes stung with the tears of pain. Every inch of his skin burned. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. The transformation had been brutal.

  He was lost.

  Confused.

  Memories of the night before filtered slowly through to his mind.

  The girl had been protected.

  It was supposed to be easy; breach the Moongate unseen, find the child, kill her and go home, slipping back into the ranks of Sabras' personal guard before anyone could notice he was missing. But his pack was dead. Their deaths could not go unnoticed. There would be a reckoning. And Blackwater Blaze would be found wanting. He wasn't looking forward to facing Redhart Jax. The Occulator would not brook failure. He breathed deeply. The air stung his lungs.

  This was not how it was supposed to be.

  The Concord demanded no Fae weapons be brought out of the Moonlands. They couldn't cross over. Despite that, the juggler had been armed. The Wardens had broken the Concord. Blaze wasn't sure what the consequences of such a violation would be, or what punishments they would bring, when the only witness to them was an assassin sent across the border to murder an innocent child?

  He tried to think.

  It was so hard.

  His head was spinning; blood pounding against the walls of his skull.

  He wanted to howl.

  There were contingencies, weren't there?

  He needed to clear his mind.

  To focus.

  He was still Blackwater Blaze, no matter what happened to his body. He was still King Sabras' Alpha. He was still a creature worthy of fear.

  There had to be contingencies.

  What was he to do if things went wrong?

  Think! he demanded of his transformed mind.

  This was always the hardest time, part Wolfen, part human, the new personality trying to wrest control of his body even as the old one struggled to resist. Neither nature truly disappeared, of course. Memories could be tapped, reserves of strength plumbed, but for now he was not himself.

  And that meant he was vulnerable.

  Blaze drew his arms in beneath him, unfamiliar once more with how they moved, how the muscles differed from those of his forelegs, crouching on all fours as the world swam around him, and slowly tried to stand—on two legs, not four—as he rose upright. He swayed unsteadily, struggling to gather his wits and get his bearings.

  It was overwhelming.

  This city—this hell—was wrong and vile. Everything reeked of decay and filth. It was built upon putrescence. Rot ate away at everything from the stones of the old buildings to the heart of the trees. Decay riddled everything.

  It took Blackwater Blaze a moment to realise what was at the heart of this sickness, but when it came to him he couldn't supress the shudder.

  There was no magic.

  There were no miracles.

  No marvels.

  That spark had burned out.

  This was a dying world.

  His nostrils flared as the wrongness assailed him on all sides. He smelled the bitter tang of the dirt, the filth of the birds carrying their germs and worms and everything else that was rotten about them. He smelled the oil clogging the engines of the cars lined up around the outside of the park and the rust eating into the railings that kept them out. He couldn't name any of these things, but that didn't matter. He could taste the grime and the sweat and the desperation heavy in the air. It choked in the back of his throat and congealed there every bit as thickly as the oil that seized the engines. It made his skin crawl.

  There was no back up plan.

  Things had not been expected to go wrong.

  The wind stirred against his naked body. It made his flesh creep.

  He couldn't stay out in the open without drawing attention to himself. If there were no contingencies, he would have to fashion one. It was as simple as that. He threw back his head and howled his frustration at the sun.

  His voice broke under the strain.

  Blackwater Blaze had never felt so completely and utterly alone.

  The first glimmerings of fear stirred inside him.

  There were Wardens here, with weapons from the Moonside. How was he supposed to face them alone and unarmed… and human?

  He needed to blend in.

  Camouflage.

  That meant finding clothes. Which meant taking clothes from someone else's back. He sniffed the air. There were so many overpowering odours it was impossible to fix on just one. He could not imagine trying to hunt in this place. Blaze looked first left then right, scanning his surroundings. There were people outside the railings. They all smelled the same. Desperate. That was the reek of humanity and it was unmistakable, and because there were so many of them crammed into such a relatively small area it took on a life all of its own and drowned out every other aroma even as Blaze caught a whiff of them. He sniffed the air again, but it was pointless.

  Beside him, the great heron unfurled its wings and took a run at the lake, white feathers trailing across the water as it barely took flight. The huge bird skimmed along the surface of the water, gliding gracefully toward the low bridge that crossed from the island to the park itself.

  Blackwater Blaze loped toward the footbridge.

  On the bridge, he hunkered down beneath the wooden handrails, making himself as small as possible. He peered over the side, looking for someone who was his size who wouldn't put up too much of a fight.

  There were more people now, some in bright colours, others in black. There was more black than any other colour, he realised, watching them. Black, he decided, was the colour he needed if he wanted to blend in. The other colours stood out too much against the tide of black clothing.

  That narrowed the search.

  He watched them come and go.

  There seemed to be no pattern to their movement. No one controlled these packs. They just drifted, each following their own migratory path. It was chaos. Blaze's skin bristled, hackles rising. He had to force himself not to break cover and start marshalling them like sheep. But of course that's what they were, the lot of them, sheep. All he needed to do was wait for one of the flock to come too close and he'd pick them off, and then he'd dress in sheep's clothing and go out amongst them. They wouldn't even know he was there.

  He almost pitied them.

  Almost.

  Somewhere in the distance a school bell chimed. Blaze baulked. He had been about to break cover, but somethi
ng about the bell, how it sounded like an alarm, made him hear it as a warning. He crouched lower, pressing up against the wooden siding of the footbridge. His nose twitched as new smells assailed him. A sharp whistle blew, three short barks, and suddenly dozens of laughing and shrieking girls came streaming through the gates into the park. They weren't quite younglings, but neither were they fully-grown adults. They were somewhere between, and maturing fast, reaching the time they would break away from the pack to form their own ties and allegiances. They were all dressed in variations of the same gymslip and plain white tee shirt with a brightly coloured sash across it. Some of the sashes were blue, others green, red and yellow, obviously denoting some sort of structure within this new pack.

  Blackwater Blaze watched them closely.

  They were ill disciplined, ignoring the barked commands of their Alpha. Blaze would never have brooked such dissension in his own pack. Order and respect for the hierarchy needed to be maintained at all times. Each beast had his place in the great scheme of things. And that place was beneath him. His word, his every growl and snarl, was law.

  But not here.

  The Alpha, a tall woman with a long blonde ponytail and fresh-faced beauty, blew sharply on the whistle again and her pack began to gather around. Over the next few minutes Blaze watched as in pairs the younglings, all female, started to run. Towards the back of the pack the females leaned close together, whispering and slouching when no one was watching them. The runners covered no more than one hundred metres at a time, short sharp bursts of speed between lampposts along the side of the lake as the path curved away toward the left, around the island where he hid.

  More younglings came out to join them, and soon more than two hundred were running shuttle runs in pairs, timing each other, goading each other on. There were still a few malingerers at the back who tried to slink off into the trees, but their pack Alpha was wise to them.