She was no Lois Lane.
“I know what I’ve read in the papers,” she lied. “That’s all. Why?”
A final, lingering stare. Then Evans sat back into the leather seat and sighed.
“You disappoint me, Miss Taylor.”
An awkward few seconds of silence.
“And that means…?”
Evans glanced at his partner and was acknowledged with a subtle nod.
“It means,” he hissed quietly through gritted teeth, “that we do things the hard way.”
Panic struck, her heart beating quicker, and Nikki jumped as the two burly suits by her sides grasped her arms with vice-like hands.
“What are you doing? Get off! Stop the car, let me out now!” Her eyes widened as Jones reached over to a briefcase and opened it with a click. From the dark, leathery confines, he withdrew a needle, long and sharp, along with a small phial of some clear liquid. “What’s that?” she almost screamed, as the agent plunged the needle through the rubber stopper and filled the syringe with the liquid. “What is that?”
Evans smiled, cold and clinical, yet there was also a hint of sadness in those eyes, as though this was the last resort, as though she had forced his hand.
“Just a little something to calm you down, Miss Taylor” he told her. “And loosen your tongue.”
“You can’t do this,” she screamed as she struggled in vain against the two that held her in place. “You can’t do this!”
Jones drew nearer, an involuntary twitch of his fingers sending a tiny jet of the liquid from the end of the syringe. And an ice-cold shiver up Nikki’s spine.
***
The wind howled and tore at his clothes as he perched high upon the gantry, but he paid it no mind, keen senses focused only on searching out his prey. Eyes squinted into the gusting breeze and he sought to clear his mind, to blot out the roar of the cars that sped beneath, straining to see into the distance.
Was that it? Was that the car that had been described to him? Long, black, sleek and approaching at speed, it put him in mind of a horned bear of his native land; hunched low and menacing. How far away was it? Five hundred yards. Closing fast. Was it the right car? Make a decision.
One hand grasping the cold steel to keep himself from being blown off the gantry and into the traffic, he raised the other, pressing a finger to the earpiece at the side of his head. A gentle beep indicated that he was through.
“Iain to Woodsman. The target approaches, my Lord.”
A brief pause, then a hiss of reply through the earpiece, barely audible over the traffic below.
“Very good, Iain. Get yourself safe. I’ll take over from here.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
Iain breathed a sigh of relief as the jet black Jaguar blasted beneath and receded behind him. He was used to heights, but the trees of home were an entirely different proposition to the wind-blasted and slippery steel of this gantry. Not to mention the traffic that thundered below.
He raised his finger to his ear once more.
“Iain to Draconis. Get me out of here, please.”
The air about him grew thick and greasy with static, the by-now familiar prickling sensation working its way across his skin, the coppery taste of translocation beginning to make itself known on his tongue.
Just before he was taken, a speeding shape blasted onto the motorway from the slip road; a forest-green blur of a motorcycle with two figures perched atop. Upon the back of the pillion passenger, a glinting silver axe held in a sheath.
Exhausts spat and snarled as the bike flew beneath the gantry, but Iain was no longer there to hear it.
***
Nikki’s head swam, everything a blur, the voices of the men around her deep, distorted, as though they were speaking underwater. She could feel the drug like ice in her veins and she fought, fought with all her willpower to resist the soporific effect, but it was futile. It surged through her mind, deadening her senses, rendering her drunk and malleable in moments. She raised a hand, now released from the iron-grip of her two escorts, staring in confusion as it seemed to blur and ripple before her eyes.
“Tell us,” came a deep and drawling voice that sounded as if it hailed from down a long tunnel. It was Evans, leaning close, his eyes rendered huge and hypnotic by the chemicals coursing through her mind. “Tell us what you know. Tell us the truth of what you saw that day…”
She tried to resist, tried to fight the impulse, but it was too strong; whatever they had injected her with, it overrode her willpower, made words just flow from mind to tongue with no barrier twixt the two. She opened her mouth, ready to tell all.
But before she could speak, Evans looked away, out of the window, alerted by the urgent cries of his comrades. Delirious, swaying, Nikki somehow managed to turn her head. What was that? Was it a motorbike drawing alongside them? Was the passenger standing up? Jumping?
A hollow thud from above, the metal roof of the Jag flexing slightly. Shouts from the suits all about her, as they fumbled at holsters to draw pistols. A bang that caused Nikki to start, even in her stupor. She looked up. A silver axe-head had pierced the roof above their heads. The screech of tearing metal as it was dragged, parting a long line of roof, before vanishing, only to reappear elsewhere with another loud bang. A second line of torn metal and fabric grew and grew to intersect with the first. Then finally, a third.
Darkness was encroaching upon the borders of her vision, unconsciousness rising to claim her, but Nikki fought it. What was happening? Even the suits seemed flustered, worried. As though the Jaguar were some huge tin of pilchards, gloved hands reached down to peel back the roof from the outside. Through increasingly blurred vision, Nikki gazed up at the figure that stood there above them, undaunted by the wind and the speed. Biker leathers, a helmet with a blacked-out visor. In one gloved hand, an axe held in a strong and practised grip.
Shots fired, the reports loud to Nikki’s failing senses even through the roar of the wind. She could barely make out anything now. Did the helmeted stranger really just deflect those bullets with the twirling head of his axe? A bump now, the muted sounds of kerfuffle right next to her. The distinctive sound of a broken nose, a twisted wrist, a snapped ankle and cries of pain.
Hands grasped her, though she could barely feel them, that same distant, numb sensation as when your arm goes to sleep and you prod it; cold, lifeless. A voice, muffled, from within a helmet, yet still strong, calm, authoritative.
“I have the girl,” it said. “Luis, take the next exit and get to the safe house. Draconis, take me home.”
A feeling of weightlessness. A taste in her mouth that seemed hauntingly familiar. Then oblivion.
***
A people carrier slowly trundled by at idle, the occupants, a man, woman and two young children, all staring with gormless wonder at the car against which Agent Evans leant.
“Move along,” he shouted.
They didn’t need to be told twice, the driver gunning the engine and propelling the car away from the forecourt and towards the motorway. Evans nodded in satisfaction, then shifted his weight to ease the pressure on his swollen ankle. The man in the helmet had stamped on it, hard. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was broken; it throbbed like hell. Footsteps from behind. He turned, Jones marching towards him from the Shell garage, a plaster across his broken nose, a steaming cardboard mug of service-station coffee proffered Evans’ way. He took it, gratefully. The others were still inside, it seemed, having a piss or browsing the fine selection of Ginsters pasties on offer.
“Any luck with the database?” Jones asked in a nasal voice, taking another long and disbelieving long at the wrecked roof of the Jag.
“Nope,” replied Evans, staring at the scrolling screen of his smartphone. “Nothing useful, at least. Taylor’s own newspaper reported an axe-wielding man roaming the streets and feeding the homeless, but that doesn’t help us in any way. The Jag’s ANPR caught the plate of the bike., though Hopefully we’ll have some luck with that. H
owever, somehow, I doubt it…”
Silence for a few moments, bar the distant roar of tyres on tarmac. Then Jones spoke again.
“Everything about this makes me uneasy, Craig. I mean, what exactly are we dealing with? That bloke with the axe; he was one of them, no doubt. But how do they do what they do? He ripped the roof off our car like it was made from tin foil. Made four trained MI5 agents look like children. Then vanished into thin air with the girl. Simply vanished. Such technology doesn’t exist man. It simply doesn’t exist.”
Evans didn’t answer, his attention held by the screen of his phone. He’d seen the video file he was watching a hundred times, but even now it still made no sense. It was fuzzy, as though there was distortion, some static in the air interfering with the camera. But even so, he could see clearly what he was supposed to be looking at. See exactly why they hadn’t let this footage fall into the hands of the Met Police or the media.
The reporter, Taylor, staggering backwards. The bomber, firing. Four bullets. The red-haired woman, standing, unharmed. A flash, then the bomber dropped his gun, screaming in pain, before running. The woman disappeared, only to reappear an instant later, taking the man out as if he were a toddler. Then she took him, a small woman lifting a grown man like he was nothing, before leaping out of the camera’s field of view.
Who were these people?
“I don’t know, Phil,” he spoke at last, as the other agents made their way back from the services towards the car. “I don’t know who they are. I don’t know how they do what they do.” He looked up, gazing into the distance, wincing slightly as shooting pains seared his ankle. “But anything we don’t understand is a potential threat to British security. Whoever they are, whatever technology they possess; we’re going to find them and we’re going to stop them.”
Chapter Three:
Oh god, where was this damn bus? She glanced over once more at the Underground station across the road. Should she? The businessman in the queue with her seemed to have made up his own mind on the matter, making his way with haste across the busy road, weaving his way between stopped cars as he half-jogged to the entrance.
With a silent nod, Nikki followed suit. She could always run when she got into town. She’d rather be closer to the office when she received the inevitable irate phone call asking where the hell she was. A black cab beeped at her as the lights changed and she raised her hand in apology as the cabbie shook his head. She made it across the road, spying the businessman disappearing down the steps and into the station entrance. She paused and frowned for a second as her eyes followed him descending.
Wait – hadn’t he been holding a briefcase?
She turned, gazing back across the street. Sure enough, there it was, still on the bench in the bus shelter. But wait, there was something else nagging at her now. Some strange and powerful sense of déjà vu. Why was this all so intensely familiar?
The old boy stuck his hand out to flag down the approaching bus and all of a sudden it clicked. She remembered everything. The pit of her stomach flooded with ice cold dread, she tried to call out, screaming at the passengers standing at that fateful bus stop, but no words would come out of her mouth.
Then the inevitable flash that signalled their death.
And yet there was no boom to follow. There was no shockwave of pure concussive power to blast her from her feet and rain razor death upon everyone around. Slowly, warily, Nikki opened her eyes. The world all about her was frozen in place. The birds suspended in mid-air, their wings caught mid-flap. The pedestrians all about her no more than escaped inmates from Madame Tussauds.
Her eyes turned to gaze at the briefcase. It was no longer there, just an incandescent ball of fire, a miniature sun so bright as to hurt the eyes. Yet it wasn’t the frozen fireball that held her attention. No, between her and the bus stop, a figure stood in the middle of the motionless street. A figure that hadn’t been there the first time round.
It was a man, or at least she thought it was; man-shaped, certainly, though she had never known a man this huge before. Of his features, his face, she could see nothing, cast into silhouette as he was against the brightness of the explosion. But his eyes; she could see them alright.
Glowing green eyes that seemed to see right through her.
Nikki, came a voice that rumbled like thunder and sent shivers of thrill and fear up and down her spine. Time to wake up. Come and find me – for we have much to discuss.
***
Where was she? She was on a bed, it seemed, the single mattress soft and warm beneath her. She rose to a seated position, blinking away the blurriness from her eyes and looking about the small room.
The walls and floor all seemed to be carved from stone, as though she were underground in some kind of bunker. But there was a smoothness to the cut. It looked almost organic, flowing, more like a cave worn away over millennia by the sea than a room carved by chisel and drill. There was light coming from somewhere, soft and low. She stood, rising unsteadily to her feet, and as if detecting that she was now awake, the light seemed to grow in intensity till she could see clearly.
There was a doorway at the end of the small room, so she made to move towards it, but staggered, the aftereffects of the drug still taking their toll. One arm reached out to steady herself against the grey wall. As her skin touched it, her eyes widened. The wall was smooth beneath her fingers, with the time-weathered appearance of grey stone, like that of a castle or cathedral, yet where any normal stone would be cold to the touch, this was warm.
As warm as living flesh.
Once more she made her way towards the door. There was no handle there, no knob to grasp and turn, and for a panic-stricken moment she thought herself trapped, locked in here, a prisoner. Hadn’t that been the case before? Hadn’t the men from MI5 been carting her away, drugged and captive, for questioning? But then what had happened? She tried to recall, but it was all a drug-addled blur of noise and motion. Something about an axe? A motorbike?
She frowned and shook her head in confusion, then turned her attention back to the door. It was still shut. Was it automatic? She moved nearer till her nose almost pressed against it but still it failed to open. Her hands roamed the surface. Again, it felt like stone, though smooth and polished. Who made a door out of stone? Was that even a thing?
She could find nothing, no switch, no button, no lever. She gave up in frustration.
“Damn it, would you just open?” A brief pneumatic hiss and Nikki started. The door slid open, sliding almost noiselessly into a recess in the wall. “Oh.”
The corridor outside was long and narrow, stretching off in both directions almost as far as the eye could see and lit with the same soft, ambient lighting as the room she’d just left. Here and there, other doors similar to the one she’d just gone through. Which way should she go? She needed to find a way out of here. Find a way out, a way to get back home. But even as the thought crossed her mind, another stronger thought forbade it.
No. You must find him.
Find who? She shook her head, screwed her eyes shut. Visions of glowing green eyes flickered across her mind’s eye. She knew she had to do something, find someone. She would get answers then. The impulse was irresistible.
Fair enough. Pick a direction. A tugging, a mental pull told her to go right. She did as she was told, loping off down the corridor with as much stealth as high-heeled shoes clattering upon a stone floor could manage, hugging each doorway as though at any second the corridor ahead might reveal needle-toting suits come to drag her away.
***
“Do you feel it?” A female voice in the ether.
A pause of a few moments.
“I do,” came another woman’s voice, softer, younger, with a lilting French accent. “Suffocating. Like a tightness about my throat.”
A nod, if such a thing could be said to exist in this state.
“The land is becoming choked,” affirmed the first voice. “The spirits run out of places to dwell. The concrete,
the steel, the man-made places; the spirits cannot live there. They’re penned in and their numbers dwindle as they recede into the bowels of the earth and fall into slumber. Feel the spirits of the earth recoil from the foundations being sunk into the ground. Listen to the keening cry of the Sylphii as the trees are hacked down to make way for new homes.”
“I could never have imagined that there’d be this many people living in the world,” the French voice breathed in quiet awe. “There are probably more people living in this one city alone than there were in my entire country back in my time…” A pause, then: “But what are we to do? We cannot ask people to stop having families. It’s human nature, n’est pas?”
“It is. And it would be unfair, you’re right. But there must be a way for us to live in communion. We managed it back home, back at the Retreat. The only difference here is… scale. The land must breathe. Nature must be allowed free reign, at least in the majority of the land. If the spirits are allowed to grow and prosper, then so too will the power of the shaman. And we will need all the power we can muster if we are to win the wars to come…”
“Our Lord will know. He always knows.”
A smile, or the nearest ethereal equivalent.
“Yes, he does. But he won’t just stamp down with his authority. That’s not how he works. Not now. He tried that once before and it didn’t work out well. This time he wants our input. Wants our feedback, our guidance. This new world will be the product of co-operation. If we’re to live in it together, we must build it together.” Another pause as the two continued to survey the city that spread out beneath them like a map. “Let’s return to our bodies…”
“Oui.”
The two spirits soared upon the ether, rising upon thermals of power that no bird could ever take advantage of. Higher they rose, leaving the sprawling cityscape receding beneath them, passing through clouds that never noticed their passage. They accelerated as they neared home, feeling the magnetic draw of their physical bodies hauling them in faster and faster, like water swirling at greater and greater speed before it went down the plughole. A shape, grey, bat-winged and impossibly vast hovered there in the night sky, invisible to the mortal eye; yet they weren’t seeing with eyes of flesh but those of the spirit. As they drew nearer, the two could feel the subtle barriers of alarm and warding that stretched out from the beast, but even as they reached them, a feeling of recognition, of welcoming, and the barriers flickered momentarily to grant them unhindered access.
Bloodless Revolution Page 3
