Immortal Make
Page 6
He tugged at the collar of his old, formal jacket and took his bearings. The flat was modern and unfamiliar, as he usually left meeting the tenants to a young man named Craig who called him uncle. He heard a TV babbling away through an open doorway. Three women regarded him from a portrait-sized photograph on the wall opposite it: a woman, a daughter old enough to be deciding what to do with her life and a child with a clever grin.
The Kendalls.
But there were two pictures there, one meant to be seen and one meant to be hidden. The only difference was the middle girl. The hidden girl wore an embracing smile. The girl meant to be seen appeared not to be enjoying the antics of the photographer. He could almost hear her thinking, YOU say cheese.
Mr Hawthorn stretched out his free hand and touched the glass over the portrait, focusing on the hidden girl.
He took measured steps to the doorway of the living room. The woman from the photo, Amelia, sat slumped on one of the living room’s aging couches. Her shirt was adorned with a supermarket logo. She did not see or hear Mr Hawthorn. He should have been deeply surprised if she had.
Amelia had the TV on, but wasn’t watching it. She held a framed photograph of in her hands, one much like the one in the hallway. Mr Hawthorn recalled that Fiona had recently told Amelia what she knew of the fate or the original Fiona Kendall.
Yes, he might have taken advantage of the situation, but he hoped the man who had killed the original Fiona suffered for it. For a young life taken and a mother’s pain.
Mr Hawthorn considered the stairs, then the state of his knees. Shaking his head, he made his way down the hallway towards the kitchen. A door with a polished brass latch appeared just before the kitchen for him.
He glanced into the kitchen before he went through the temporary door. Unlike the corridor that had brought him to this wing, here he could feel life in the old, old building. He guessed a new room would appear in the next few days. He wondered what the Kendalls would think of it.
They will ask their neighbours, of course. He permitted himself a nasty little chuckle. Oh, how frightened they’ll be. But the boys next door will set them right. That’s what they’re there for.
He passed through the temporary door. Within was a short corridor that turned left after only two of his slow steps. Then another door and when he went through it, he was on the first floor landing of Flat 2.
Mr Hawthorn gently pushed the door of the middle bedroom open. The youngest girl, Jessica, slept soundly under a thick duvet in her creaky old bed. She looked sweet and carefree in sleep, not at all like the fierce, clever and driven person she was when awake.
An automaton raven with glass feathers perched on the end of her bed, pretending it wasn’t standing sentry. The sight of Mr Beak, that old reprobate, crinkled the corners of Mr Hawthorn’s eyes as though he smiled.
He slipped away and went to the flat’s back bedroom. The door was closed and this one Mr Hawthorn did not risk opening. He pressed his hand to the door and pushed his sight through it.
To see the marvel.
The middle girl from the photo downstairs, Fiona. She sat on her bed, reading a thick library book, tapping her toes in their black socks as though to a beat only she could hear. The light from the ceiling light cast a shadow at her side, but that shadow prowled back and forth, sniffing the air for danger. That shadow – a remarkable piece of magic all by itself.
But the girl, she was the marvel.
He had sensed her arrival in London decades ago. He had prepared through her long, timeless sleep until she was released again, two years ago. He had put forth his will, tipped the scales of coincidence and choice and consequence. Now she was here.
Within his power.
He shook his head. Once such a working would have merely taxed him a little. Now, so reduced after his long life, it had taken him decades. But it was done. She was here, with strong allies close at hand.
Mr Hawthorn had helped build the structures of power that maintained the unease truce between the shadow world’s factions. But those structures were failing. Good governance was giving way to personal ambition. Chaos would follow. A counterbalance to the likes of Crispin Chalk was needed.
He was no longer able to be such a force himself. But he could put such a force into play.
Fiona, the marvel – she would conquer. She would rule.
He could only hope she ruled well.
Fiona remained absorbed in her book. Mr Hawthorn let his sight return to his eyes and searched for a way into the apartment next door.
The wing that had become Flat 1 Hawthorn House was not as large as the wing he had just left, but then it had contained interesting occupants for a much shorter time. He sensed it was not ready to spawn another room, not like Flat 2, but its gathering momentum pleased him.
He sent his sight through the door into the back room on the first floor, the one that from outside would appear beside Fiona’s. He was even more cautious this time, because the occupant was a Blackwood warlock.
Julian slept. His mind was wrapped in wards of a skill he had never seen, not in all his years, skill Julian had brought back with him from beyond the black gulf between worlds. But he did not need to penetrate the young man’s mind to guess his dreams. Julian twitched with the nightmares of a soldier recently returned home.
He was still without his black warlock’s ring. His family’s legacy, the heart of their power. Mr Hawthorn wondered when the boy would decide he needed it. The bedroom window was closed, but unlatched. He snorted. In case the vampire comes by later. He did not approve, but that could be said of his response to generation after generation of the Blackwood family.
He moved towards the front of the house. A bedroom stood empty along the hall – its tenant had been killed and so far his surviving tenants had not asked for a replacement. He wondered if they feared drawing danger down on another flatmate, or if it was just the thoughtless laziness of young men.
In the front room, sprawled half in and half out of his covers, the shapeshifter Rob slept. He snored softly on every third breath. Mr Hawthorn observed the many-faceted symbols that were his flesh, the human-form symbol ascendant, the others quiescent. All traces of the foul psychic residue that had contaminated him when he touched Julian’s sword were gone.
He sensed nothing remarkable about Rob’s dreams. Mr Hawthorn had wondered if the boy’s gift of precognition would try again, but he thought it would not. It had delivered its warning. That it had been lost in the nightmares then polluting Rob’s psyche was just bad luck.
Mr Hawthorn stepped back from the door and another appeared beside him in response to his intent. This one, he knew, would lead him back into the wing of the house where he lived. He opened the door, but paused on the threshold and looked back.
This was his last great working. His long, long centuries of watching over these isles were ended. He had tried before to hand over this responsibility, to find heirs worthy of the task. Those efforts had ended in failure, one way or another. This time, these young ones, they would have to do. They must. He was too old to try again.
Mr Hawthorn closed the door behind him.
Chapter 6 – Astra
Astra kept her coat and scarf on as she entered the old hangar, via a side entrance into a series of abandoned offices. There was no point trying to warm the building. Heat fled its empty, dusty space. They needed all the electricity that ran into the building for the ghost machine anyway.
East London was werewolf territory, but the hangar was far enough out into Essex that it hardly mattered. The dynasties were busy snapping at each other, or beating their chests about the bravery they’d show if only the war with the vampires would finally start. Too busy to notice a group of rejects and failures huddled in an old airfield outside the boundary of the M25.
“What was this place used for, anyway?” Astra asked. The dusty old furniture they’d found had been thrown out, replaced by a row of camper beds. The bright blues and reds of the sleeping
bags stood out in sharp contrast to the peeling paint and faded carpet.
Crispin opened a door for her. The hallway beyond was hung with staff photographs, dusted over by the passage of decades. “It’s ex-military. One of the airfields where they used to launch bombers towards Europe in the Second World War. They handed it back to the original owner after the war. He tried to run a canning business out of it, but it went under. These days it’s in limbo while two branches of the family litigate at each other.”
“How did you find it?” Astra asked.
Crispin shrugged. “Ask Konstantin. How a Russian would know how to find this place, I can't imagine.” Which Astra knew meant he didn't care enough to ask, either.
Crispin had inherited the gym-sculpted physique of his werewolf dynasty, but not the height. She was careful only to wear flat heels around him. His dark eyes burned with the certainty of one who had turned crushed dreams into a step on the path of destiny.
He opened another doorway for her and let them out into the main hangar. Any aircraft that had once roosted there were long gone, along with the tools and machinery used to support them. Gone too were all traces of the canning business that followed. The hangar was a vast, empty space, a plain of concrete spotted with old stains of aviation fuel.
Here, Konstantin and his grandson had assembled the machine that stored and projected the wizard’s ghost.
The machine consisted of four cube-shaped blocks piled on top of each other, linked by bundled threads of electrical wiring. A thick cable ran across the floor to the hangar’s most intact mains power outlet, where it connected to a series of bulky adapters Konstantin and his grandson had cobbled together. Smaller cables ran to a device the size of a bedside table, assembled from copper coils and crystal emitters. Astra’s blood cycled through a plastic tube that looped in through the device’s centre, then out to a heater that kept it warm.
The top of the machine sprouted more cables, six of them. Each ran to the top of an upright dentist’s chair bolted to the concrete floor. The chairs were set in a ring five feet in radius around the machine. Bone charms hung from the cables on coloured string tied in place at precise intervals.
Two of the dentist chairs were occupied. Two young men, both of werewolf blood but denied the right to be turned, were strapped in place. Wires were connected to plates attached to the tops of their heads and more wires ran to the plates fastened to the other six main chakra points on their bodies. Each plate was acid-etched with tiny runes.
Astra lowered her voice. “You let Konstantin attach one of those things to your genitals?”
Crispin winced. “Pavel usually does it. He doesn’t warm the sensor plates up first either.”
Astra shuddered in exaggerated horror.
To one side of the machine, near the mains power cable, was a desk on which stood four aligned laptops. Pavel Antonov looked up from the laptop second from the left. He was stocky and dark like his grandfather, of old Siberia Tatar stock. It wasn’t until he stood up that his height was revealed. He wore a sweater emblazoned with a British football team logo.
“You say hello,” Crispin whispered. “He likes you.”
Crispin wasn’t close enough to elbow.
“Hi Pavel,” Astra said. “How is everything this evening?”
“Hello, Miss Kallis,” he said and blushed. “I am well, thank you for asking.”
She was about to try again by asking him how the operation was going, when his grandfather, Konstantin, rose from behind one of the unoccupied dentist chairs. In his husky, carrying voice he said, “We are functioning normally.”
“Konstantin, there you are.” Crispin’s smile was as if directed to a favourite old schoolteacher. “I thought you must have nipped out to the pub.”
“I do not drink at pubs,” Konstantin replied. The lines of his face were etched by hard years. He had never cracked under the assault of Crispin’s charm, nor Astra’s. But she’d seen a smile creep onto his features once, in response to an equally rare smile from Pavel. They had thought no one was watching.
Konstantin was a greyer, stockier and far, far older version of Pavel. He had the assuredness of a man who knew how to work with his hands and had spent a long life doing so. But the skin of those hands was blotched and riddled with blue veins. The joints were swollen with arthritis.
Konstantin was a werewolf, about as old as a werewolf got. He looked in his early sixties, which by Astra’s reckoning made him at least one hundred and thirty. He did not lock himself up during the full moon. Astra did not think he could change any more, or if he did, it would be for the last time.
They thought it was Konstantin who had bitten Pavel, but like Crispin and a rare few in their crew he had not turned. Most who were bitten and didn’t transition died in agony, but in a few the transformation never fully ignited and the attending witch or warlock managed to save them.
Crispin believed the truth was more humiliating for Pavel and his grandfather. Pavel always vanished on the full moon. Crispin thought Pavel had turned, but not all the way.
“He’s only halfway a werewolf?” Astra had asked. “Is that how you would say it in English?”
Crispin shrugged. “Good enough.”
The machine made a long, whistling sound. Pavel dropped into a chair and bent over one of the laptops.
“Problem?” Crispin asked.
Pavel shook his head. “Diggory is out of balance. But not so much.” He stabbed at the keys with his blunt fingers.
“That one,” Konstantin said, “he needs the most practice. Liam and I will crack him into shape.”
Diggory was the smaller of the two men strapped into the dentist chairs. Pavel had muttered about having to adjust the electrode plates until Konstantin had found a cushion and shoved it under Diggory’s arse.
“You’ve finished your checks since we last used the ghost?” Crispin asked.
“There was some feedback when the Whitlock mansion exploded,” Konstantin said. When he talked technical problems, he grumbled and shook his head in slow turns. “I am still checking the alignments on the psychograph needles.”
Astra had met Pavel a year after arriving in London. They found an understanding lay between them, the shared pain of their failure to turn, the humiliation of the scorn heaped on them by true werewolves. So Pavel had introduced her to his grandfather.
And Konstantin had a plan.
Pavel and Konstantin had smuggled a machine out of Russia piece by piece, over a period of three years. It was Cold War technology, part of a Soviet experiment in powering astrally projected spies with ghost electricity. Konstantin would not say how he’d come by it, but Pavel had hinted at old, dark connections between Soviet paranormal scientists and Siberia’s small werewolf population.
Konstantin knew the true source of the werewolf gift. He needed allies to recover it and enough ghost electricity for the ritual that would allow Pavel to complete his transition into the werewolf state.
Astra knew ghostcrafters, like Diggory and Liam. And she knew just what ghost they should put together.
A month ago, the six of them spent a week in a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris. After negotiating with the French transhumanist mystics who had laid claim to the place, they crawled inside its twisted, corrupted space, tried their best to ignore the things they realised used to be human bodies and set up their recording equipment. By the sixth day of exposure, Konstantin was sure the psychometric plates had absorbed every remaining impression of the being who had destroyed the warehouse.
They’d spent a day in Cardiff, in the house of a recently-deceased seer. There hadn’t been much to gather there, but the act of killing had left an impression Konstantin said was invaluable. Few things a person did left such a strong impression afterwards.
They’d passed two weeks hidden on a rooftop above Trafalgar Square. Crispin had feared gaining the notice of the one who dwelled below the square, but Astra had insisted they take the chance. The wizard hadn’t spent lo
ng in Trafalgar Square and that time had been spent in nothing more than conversation, yet the psychometric remnants were strong. Konstantin theorised every impression of the wizard might be naturally stronger than that of a mortal, or his conversation, whoever it had been with, had been unusually fateful.
It was enough. They returned to the old airfield in Essex. Konstantin and Pavel assembled the collected impressions in the ghost machine. Others were recruited, more outcast descendants of the werewolf dynasties. They practised and practised the ritual of manifesting the wizard’s ghost, all without success until, knowing how magic worked, Astra volunteered a fresh vial of her blood in place of the dead bones they’d tried to use as a focus.
“Your work is amazing, Konstantin,” Crispin said. “Truly, it is. We’ll be ready to act again soon?”
Konstantin was about to ramble on further about the technical challenges he was constantly battling. Astra jumped in before he could continue. “We won’t need it for a while. Not for the next step.”
Pavel rose to his feet, his large hands on either side of the laptop he’d been using. “What is the next step? I thought it is time to attack Trafalgar Square.”
“Not yet,” Crispin said.
“But we know the titan skeleton is there now.” Pavel appeared to glower at the best of times. As he spoke faster, his expression heated. “We should take it before anyone knows about us.”
Crispin spread a smile across his face, smooth as an oil slick. “I understand your impatience, Pavel, I really do. We all want the same thing here. But we don’t know, not for sure. If we attack the Trafalgar facility, we’ll start a countdown. If the skeleton isn’t there, we won’t have time to find it and recover it before the Shadow Council comes down on us.”
“It must be there.” Pavel took a step towards Crispin. To Astra’s eyes, Crispin always seemed taller and Pavel shorter, but Pavel topped Crispin by half a head. He could loom when he wanted to. “What else could it be down there, casting that web across London?”