But no, the threat was real. They were real. And they were here. And now she knew. But too late for her to do anything about it. For she was about to die.
“Those to come…?” she pressed on, eager to milk every possible last second she could.
The man shook his head.
“Sorry. But I don’t have time to stand and chat. I have errands to run; things to do, people to kill. Goodbye.”
This was it. Her mind froze, unable, unwilling to comprehend what was happening. There was no life flashing before her eyes. No last minute revelation, no prayer for deliverance. Only observance. She observed as his finger closed upon the trigger. Observed, as the muzzle of the pistol flashed.
Observed, as the air before her rippled, a shadowy form instantly taking shape between her and her executioner. The report of the gunshot echoed about the alleyway. Then faded.
She… she was alive! But how?
She took a step back, then another, till she bumped into the cold wall behind her. The terrorist did likewise, moving back a couple of paces in surprise, the attention of both of them held by the robed figure that stood there between them, that wasn’t there a second before. The mysterious newcomer was holding the spent bullet twixt finger and thumb, inspecting it as one would a curious beetle, before discarding it to the floor with a ‘hmph.’
“Who…? What…? How…?”
It was the terrorist this time that was lost for words, stumbling further backwards, gun held level but confusion twisting his handsome features.
Nikki watched the robed figure reach up and lower its hood, revealing a shock of long, red, wavy hair and a youthful face that seemed to possess beauty and intelligence both, in equal and copious measure. How old the woman was, she couldn’t tell, but she was petite, shorter even than Nikki herself. But there was something there, some strange humming aura of power that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to prickle. The air about the woman seemed to almost shimmer like that above the tarmac on a hot summer’s day. There was a sense of presence.
Of power.
The newcomer placed her finger to an earpiece and spoke, her voice young, soft, yet tinged with authority.
“Found him. Can you get a lock?”
A crackled voice in reply, barely audible over the sound of the drizzle hitting the concrete floor.
“Negative, no lock. Interference from the buildings. Bring him to a higher level.”
“Will do.” The woman looked up, fixing the gunman with piercing green eyes. “You’re coming with me.”
“I’m coming with no-one,” the man snarled. “The Judgement will not be delayed!”
He aimed and fired, loosing off two, three, four bullets at the petite form, causing Nikki to start in shock and close her eyes. She opened them, expecting the female to be nothing more than a hole-ridden corpse on the alley floor, but no; the woman stood there still, miraculously unharmed, head cocked to one side as a slight smile of amusement played her face.
Nikki realised that she could hear something; a buzzing, a whistling, like that of a mosquito passing by your ear on its quest for blood. Her eyes focused and her mouth opened: there, about the woman, the spent bullets whipped and whirled, looping in useless and almost invisible arcs; meteors caught in the orbit of some celestial body. Finally, at an upward glance from the woman, the bullets launched off, dogs let slip from a lead, to zip harmlessly into the sky.
The terrorist’s eyes widened in fear and rage and he levelled the gun once more, ready to try his luck a second time, but his target’s eyes narrowed, her smile disappearing. Nikki’s hand shot to her mouth as green irises vanished to be replaced by pools of incandescent fire. A slim, white hand stretched out, pointing towards the gunman. The man looked down, mouth opening in an unearthly howl of pain as his weapon began to glow first red-, then white-hot. He dropped it, where it sizzled on the damp ground, roaring in agony as the skin of his palm smoked and the alley was filled with the sickening sweet scent of roasting human flesh.
Clutching his ruined hand, he turned, ran, his expensive loafers splashing through muddy puddles as he sought escape.
The robed female disappeared in a whip crack rush of wind.
Nikki gazed about; where had she gone? In a blur, the mysterious stranger reappeared down the alleyway, blocking the terrorist’s escape. A bellowed cry of rage, the man charged her, hoping to smash her aside by virtue of his superior size. But at the last instant she sidestepped, delivering a skilful spinning back kick to his mid-section, crumpling him over in agony, the wind driven from his lungs, before finishing him with a front kick to the face that sent him sprawling to the cold, hard floor. He lay there, twitching, groaning, as the red-haired woman stared down at him with barely disguised contempt.
Nikki rose, trembling, still unable to believe all that she’d been witnessing despite her very eyes. As she moved, the other woman looked up at her. Nikki shivered, feeling the intensity of those green eyes piercing her very soul. Yet there was no violence there. In fact, quite the opposite: warmth, comfort. And warning.
“Go home,” the woman told her in a voice that suggested wisdom and confidence beyond her years. “Keep safe.”
With that, the petite figure reached down, grasped the unconscious man by his expensive jacket and hoisted him onto her shoulders with no more effort than a man might carry a small child. Then she turned, and Nikki gasped as the red-headed woman leapt ten feet into the air, fingers digging like claws into the wall, the bricks yielding beneath her touch like polystyrene. Another leap, this time to the opposite wall, then another, back again, till the figure and her unwilling passenger stood high upon the rooftop, two stories above the awestruck reporter. Nikki could do no more than stand and stare, mouth agape, her hair slowly plastered to her face by the worsening drizzle.
The flame-haired woman placed her finger to her ear once more, seeming to look up into the grey sky as she spoke.
“In position.”
Breaking out of her astonished stupor, Nikki called up.
“Wait!” she implored. “Who are you?”
From high above, the woman smiled down, even as the air began to grow thick and heavy with static, the droplets of rain all about seeming almost to slow, then hang, suspended, in the air.
“A friend.”
A boom of thunder, a flash of white light that bleached the alleyway. When her vision finally returned, Nikki found herself standing alone in the rain-swept alley, with nothing to remind her of what had happened, save a lonely bullet lying spent upon the floor, the mournful howl of sirens in the distance.
And on her tongue, the strange and lingering taste of tin…
Chapter Two:
“Nikki? Someone’s here to see you.”
“Tell them I’m busy.”
“Yeah, err, I don’t think that’s gonna wash with these guys…”
With a sigh, Nikki looked up from her computer, her eyes following Henry’s pointing finger. There, across the other side of the long, buzzing room, two figures could be seen standing in Mr Pullman’s glass-walled office. Tall men, in dark suits, standing unwaveringly calm and composed in the face of Pullman’s tirade at being disturbed. Even as she looked, one of the men glanced over, caught her eye.
“Shit,” she said.
The door to the editor’s office opened and Pullman appeared, his squat, bulldoggish face even more irate than usual.
“Taylor,” he growled across the office. “I think you’d best get in here. Getting pretty fed up with these interruptions…”
She rose, head high, and walked across the office, conscious of all the stares from her co-workers. Their curiosity had ebbed over the weeks following the bomb blast, but every time the police had come to ask her more questions it set the rumour mill a-turning once again. She had been there that fateful day. And she had lived where so many others had not. Thirty-eight others, to be exact.
She entered the office.
“Can I help you gents?”
The
men stared at her as she entered. Both were wearing very expensive looking suits, a fact that chilled her somewhat, putting her in mind of the bomber on that dark day. Unconsciously, she glanced down at their shoes. They were plain, black, unadorned.
“Would you care to close the door, miss?”
She did as she was asked.
“What’s this about? Who are you? I’ve told the police everything I know. Time and again. I’m not sure what else you want me to say.”
The lies came smoothly to her tongue, these days. When the police had first approached her, after reviewing all the CCTV footage, she’d had to think long and hard about what she was going to tell them. How could they possibly believe what she’d witnessed, when she could still barely believe it herself? No, they’d seen her get up, seen her follow the bomber. But nothing more after she’d gone into the alley.
And that’s all she’d told them.
She’d followed him, determined to get a picture. But then lost him in the alleyway. Yet here they were again. Still asking. Still probing. These two looked different, though. More clean cut. Handsome, yet hard-looking.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
One of the men, the taller one, answered her.
“My name’s Agent Evans, this is Agent Jones. Counter Terrorism.”
Her eyes widened. She’d been questioned by the police before, in several different guises. But not these fellows.
“MI5, then?”
The shorter suit smiled indulgently.
“Counter Terrorism,” he affirmed.
“We’d like you to come with us,” tall suit continued. “We have some questions to ask you.”
“I’ve told the police everything I know,” she protested.
“We have… different questions.”
As though refusal wasn’t an option, they moved towards the door, opening it and inviting her to follow. Pullman leapt up from behind his desk once more, all white, sweat-stained shirt, brown bracers and folds of skin from too many Gregg’s sausage rolls.
“What are you doing?” he spat, face growing red with rage. “You can’t just waltz in here and take my staff in the middle of the day! I’ve a paper to run!”
Tall-suit smiled as he made to close the door.
“Good day, Mr Pullman. Thank you for your co-operation.”
***
They sped through the London streets in a black and whisper-quiet Jaguar limousine and Nikki looked out of the side window from her seat in the rear, watching the traffic, the people, all flashing by, and wondering how her life had come to this.
Only those few short weeks ago she had moved down from the peace and quiet of the rural Midlands, hoping to make a career for herself here in the city. Hoping to forge for herself a new destiny, make new friends. Maybe even find herself a new man. That thought in particular brought a brief wave of melancholy. She still remembered the look of heartbreak, of betrayal on Elliot’s face when she’d told him that she was moving south. And that she didn’t want him to follow. He hadn’t been a bad boyfriend, as boyfriends go. But he was part of her past; part of the safe mundanity of home.
She’d moved to London because she’d wanted change. Wanted excitement. But had she found too much? Work was hectic, stressful. And then the bomb. And that woman, doing things, displaying abilities that Nikki couldn’t even begin to fathom. Weeks later, she often found herself wondering whether it had all just been an hallucination brought on by the bomb blast. But no, the CCTV cameras had shown the man. Shown Nikki, herself, following. It was real, all of it. The Brotherhood. The red-haired woman.
Suddenly the safe routine of home, of Elliot and the Rutland Gazette, didn’t seem too bad.
Turning her attention back to the present, she regarded the men in the rear cabin of the limousine with her, and tried to suppress once more the feeling that she was being kidnapped. The two that had brought her down from the office, Evans and Jones, sat on the opposite bench to her, facing rearward, watching her with interested and scrutinising eyes as though they expected her to any second now break into song. She felt uncomfortable beneath their gaze. To her sides, two more be-suited men sat. Of their names, she had no clue.
A change in volume, the engine’s muted note rising to a turbine whine, acceleration gently pushing Nikki back into the leather seat. She glanced out the window once more; they were on the motorway now, dispatching lesser cars with ease. They passed beneath a gantry, a speed camera flashing as they sped by. The men in suits didn’t even appear to notice. Or care.
“Where are we going again?” she asked.
“Somewhere more… suited to discussing such delicate matters,” the taller one, Evans, replied. His voice was measured. His blue eyes, piercing.
“I’ve already told you,” Nikki explained, exasperated. “I’ve got nothing more to add. I’ve told you everything I know.”
There was silence for a few moments, save the gentle rustle of the wind from without the Jaguar as it sped on its way. Then Evans finally spoke once more.
“So you say.” His eyes never left hers. “But perhaps there are details you might think… inconsequential. Insignificant. Things that might seem small but could prove important as part of the… larger picture.” He leaned towards her, closer, his voice lowered, hushed, conspiratorial. “When you pursued the bomber, when you followed him into the alleyway… was there anyone else with you? Did you see anyone else following him? Accompanying him, perhaps?”
A shiver down Nikki’s spine. What, exactly, did these men know? Christ, did they think she was involved somehow in all of this? That she might even be working with the bomber?
“I’ve told you all I know… I followed him into the alley. Then he disappeared. I lost him”
Evans sat there, face unreadable, listening to her protestations. Then continued as though she hadn’t spoken at all.
“What do you know of The Shadows?” he asked her, out of the blue.
“I know that Cliff Richard sang with them…”
He smiled but didn’t deign to reply, instead, waiting for her to reconsider her answer. She knew what he was talking about, of course. The papers, even her paper, had been full of reports of the vigilantes these last weeks. The rumours had started even before the bomb, but now they were more active than ever, springing up all over London. Beyond, at times. ‘The Shadows’ they’d been dubbed by the press; vigilantes that would appear from nowhere to help people, to defend those in need when they needed it most.
There had been that young student stumbling home drunk from a club that night a couple of weeks ago. A man had jumped her, dragged her kicking and screaming into the bushes. A known rapist. The girl had barged into the nearest police station an hour later, unharmed, unmolested, but frightened out of her wits. The police had found the rapist tied upside-down to a lamppost, babbling incoherently about the sound of the wind. The taste of metal.
Then there was the man that had jumped in front of the Underground train at Piccadilly in the height of rush hour. According to the distraught commuters that had been present, the train had slammed on its brakes in a flurry of sparks, but too late, too slow. Yet there had been no crunching of bones, no scent of blood in the still, warm underground air. The confused crowd had turned to spy the man now standing on the platform behind them, miraculously unharmed and pale as a ghost, nodding in amazement with tears rolling down his face as a robed figure had spoken gentle words to him, before rushing off to disappear in the crowd.
The homeless, those living on the streets, seeing the world pass on by, they had their tales to tell as well. It was cold out there right now; the British spring was no time to be sleeping rough. Food was scarce. Shelter was hard to find. The common man had his own troubles to occupy him and, despite the best wishes in the world, they would often walk on past when a youth running from home or an old man down on his luck begged them for change. But the Shadows didn’t walk on by.
Nikki herself had interviewed an old boy living rough outside a
bus station with only his dog for company. A man had approached him one night, tall and with an axe strapped across his back. The old man had winced, his dog growling, thinking his time had come, thinking some psycho about to end him. But no. The man brought hot food, a thick blanket. And company. He had sat, talked with the old boy, shared his troubles and kept him company until the small hours, before wishing him well and walking off into the night.
She’d pressed him, but aside from the axe there had been no discerning features about the stranger. He’d just seemed like a humble, everyday man. Even the name he’d given was nondescript, commonplace.
Alann.
These cases. And more, so many more these last weeks. Miraculous. Mysterious. These ‘Shadows,’ these vigilantes suddenly appearing as if to spread hope where there had been fear. To inspire unity, where there had been discord.
Silent guardians, existing outside of the law.
The law, it seemed, didn’t take kindly to that.
That girl, the one in the robes with the flame-red hair that had saved Nikki’s life. She’d been one of them, she knew. The way she’d swooped in out of nowhere, saved her. Displayed speed and strength beyond anything the reporter had thought humanly possible. Then vanished in a flash of lightning. Yes, there was no doubt. She was one of them. One of the Shadows.
And now, it seemed, the police, the secret service – however these guys were – had had enough of people doing their job for them. They wanted answers. Nikki wasn’t going to give any, not if she could help it. She wanted to go back to her normal life. To forget about everything that had happened. How crazy was that? She was a reporter – surely she should be frothing at the mouth, champing at the bit to chase a story like this? But no, it was too big, too strange, too out of her comfort zone.
Bloodless Revolution Page 2
