“Then there’s the Atlantis theory,” Tamara said.
“If you believe in those old myths.” Calum caught himself and softened his tone. “I mean, it’s certainly a possibility.”
“You mean the two civilisations?” Fiona asked. “The one in the Atlantic and the one in the Pacific? They destroyed each other in a war ten thousand years ago.”
Tamara’s mouth hung open. Calum scowled. “Who told you that?” he asked.
Julian, in the pub one night, she thought. Only Tamara had ever met Rob and Julian and Tamara had only the vaguest idea of what their lives were like. She didn’t think Tamara, Cecilia and Calum would be happy knowing the rest. “I’m not sure. I read it somewhere.”
“The stories of a civilisation in the Atlantic have” – Calum’s eyes dodged sideways to Tamara – “some credibility. It may have existed. The one in the Pacific is just a myth.”
But Fiona had met a soldier from one civilisation, a soldier preparing to go to war with the other. “But if there were two and they went to war maybe one of them – I don’t know – cursed the sun so the other side couldn’t use it.”
“It’s as good a theory as any,” Cecilia said.
Calum nodded. “But not the prevailing one.”
The talk turned to an old school friend Cecilia had heard from. Fiona withdrew from the conversation and over her coffee mug , she watched them chat.
She remembered a voice from the past, looking upon her time in quiet horror. What did we do?
If she could find one of the seven cities on the map in Jessica’s lair, on the archipelago that existed now only in myth, maybe she could find out.
Cecilia tugged at the sleeve of her shirt. “Tamara told us you have a new job. Congratulations.”
“I have the most pointless job modern western society has conceived.” Fiona set her mug down on the table and made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I work for a company that censors the internet.”
Tamara burst out laughing.
Calum wrinkled his nose. “Who would be stupid enough to think they could do that?”
“Cerberus Watch, at your service,” Fiona said. “We have the contract from the London Shadow Council to scour the internet for any signs of the shadow world and send them one of those take-down notices.”
“A friend of mine got one of those notices,” Cecilia said with a wry smile. “She posted too much detail on her blog. They sent her a pretty scary email.”
“You can get away with it if it’s private stuff, apparently,” Fiona said. “If you’re posting on a private forum, or you’re only sharing with the right people on a social network. We get these lists of sites to check from some kind of programs they have running that scour the entire internet. We check them out and decide whether or not they have to get pulled.”
“Can’t they just automate the whole thing?” Tamara asked.
“Some of it’s automated. Some of it they want a human to check.”
Calum had been shaking his head all the way through Fiona’s explanation. “I don’t see how long that can last. With more magicians than ever, every one of them with a camera phone, it has to be just a matter of time.”
“And in the meantime,” Fiona said, “I’m willing to take their money at a minimum wage rate per hour.” She picked up her mug again and sipped the remains of her coffee. “Besides, my CV isn’t exactly in fine shape. When your last references are people who tried to destroy the world, you take what you can get.”
Tamara giggled. “So true, I’m sorry to say.”
They left before it got too late and made their way back towards the nearest Dockland Light Rail station. It was even colder than earlier and Fiona wished for some kind of little cantrip that would warm her up the way the magic on the hilltop had.
She gave her shadow a reproving look. If only you could do a few more tricks.
Tamara fell in beside her while Cecilia and Calum were up ahead. “Can you search the stuff Cerberus Watch censors? Maybe there’s something in there you could use if Julian doesn’t help you.”
“Encouraging me to consult the forbidden texts of the internet? You?”
Tamara laughed. “That’s what happens when you fall in with an evil cult.” She fussed with one of the charms on her wrist. “I believe you about the ancient civilisations.”
“You do?”
“Sure. There are all sorts of stories about the seven cities of Atlantis. Besides, it makes sense. If they were as advanced as the stories say, why would a volcano or an earthquake destroy them? A war is much more plausible.”
“I’m glad you think so.” They diverted round a man walking a small dog. The dog wore a plaid coat and appeared to bounce off the frigid sidewalk as high as possible each time it touched down.
“So how do you know about them?” Tamara asked. “Julian?”
She didn’t feel like giving Julian credit for anything just then. “He filled in some of the blanks. Most of it I got from a guy I meet in dreams sometimes. He’s from there.”
Tamara’s voice rose to a squeak. “You know someone from Atlantis?”
“You’re about to collide with a streetlight.”
Tamara recoiled and Fiona had to grab her arm to stop her from falling over. “Um, thanks. You never told me you know someone from Atlantis. Who is he? What has he told you about it?”
She had kept things from Tamara, things such as what little she knew of her sliced-up past, her false memories, the terrifying beings that were chasing her. She trusted Tamara, or at least she did now that they weren’t both students with the Red Sisters who had tried to burn all of London in a ritual sacrifice. She just hadn’t got around to telling her how unsteady her own life was.
You haven’t because you like pretending it isn’t, the traitorous voice in the back of her mind said.
She told herself to mind her own business.
Surely telling Tamara about Charo would do no harm. “He’s a soldier, I think. A magician soldier. I meet him in the dream of London, but sometimes he’s younger and sometimes he’s older.”
“And there really was a war?” Fiona kept a hold on Tamara’s arm, because the other girl would have walked out into the road without noticing.
“I think so,” Fiona said. “I’ve never met him after it, but I think I’ve met him just before it.”
“Amazing.” Tamara tucked a strand of hair between her teeth and chewed on it. “There’s almost nothing left of them, you know. A few old stories, a few ancient relics in private collections. It must be amazing, meeting someone from then.”
But Fiona found herself wondering what kind of power they and their enemies had possessed, if they could wipe each other out so completely.
Maybe it was just as well they were gone.
Chapter 9 – Fiona
Fiona hunched over the desk of her office cubicle with the bent spine of one who hadn’t been thinking about the morning when staying up late the night before. Her left hand was curved around the side of her empty coffee mug and her right hand rested on her PC mouse. With bleary eyes, she read from her computer screen.
Disagreement exists about whether the tomb was created before or after the cataclysm. Many believe the writing on the tomb walls proves it could only have been built before the cataclysm as, according to rumours gleaned from within the Emerald Consortium, the language remains a mystery to this day.
However, the myths of the destruction of the vampires’ Night City, dated roughly two thousand years after the cataclysm, include references to “conjurings of fire and air”, which are too similar to tales of the King of the Northern Tomb to be a coincidence.
We must never rule out the possibility that what some take for death may merely be a death-like sleep, like those undertaken by some vampire elders. After all, according to the Sunless Chronicles, the vampire Taludo was nothing more than a dried-out husk when revived in 1313. (See: 14th Century incursion of werewolves fleeing the Golden Horde). It took over thirty werewolves to
finally bring him down.
If Taludo could be revived to his full strength after two centuries of sleep, it is entirely possible that the King of Fire and Air could be similarly revived to destroy the Night City after two millennia.
Fiona sat back and rubbed her eyes. She had been investigating the myths of Atlantis again, but a surprise reference to the tomb Jessica had visited in Norway had taken her down a completely different rabbit hole.
“The answer is coffee,” a voice said behind her.
Fiona jumped and spun her chair around. A girl around her age, her hands raised in appeasement, backed away.
“Sorry,” Fiona said, slumping back. “I stayed out late last night.”
The girl’s face broke into a smile. She wore a light scarf wrapped round her neck and a coat with lots of pockets, even though the office was warm. Her heels were big and clunky, as though to bring her up towards a more average height.
“Fiona, right?” the girl asked. Her accent put her somewhere in east London. “I’m Sorcha.”
“Coffee sounds like a good idea, but my break isn’t for–”
“Your name is next to mine on the break schedule,” Sorcha said. “At ten. Which is now.”
“Oh thank goodness.” Fiona locked her computer, located her empty coffee mug in her hand after a brief desk search and heaved herself out of her chair.
The offices of Cerberus Watch were an open-plan maze of low-sided cubicles. Everywhere Fiona looked, heads were bent over computer screens and eyeballs scanned websites flagged by the system as potential violations of Shadow Council law. The room itself was a bunker of institutional blandness beneath stale fluorescent lights, despite or because of the cheerful motivational posters slapped up on the walls. The plastic pot plants in the corners needed dusting.
About thirty agents inspected the links sent to them, overseen by three team managers who broke away from their spreadsheets to assist when an agent wasn’t sure which way to make a judgement. Most of the agents were college age, though like Fiona most weren’t attending college. Upper management staff were enthroned in ergonomic luxury behind a wall of glass at one end of the room.
“Going on our break,” Sorcha said, wiggling her fingers next to the head of their supervisor, Nathan.
Nathan was senior by the standards of the agent floor, a respectable twenty-four years old. He flicked back and forth between spreadsheet tabs as he laboriously copied and pasted numbers. Team manager reflex prompted him to say, “Make sure you’re back in fifteen minutes”, but he remained absorbed in his numbers.
The kitchen was more alcove than room, separated from the main floor by a door with an electronic swipe card lock. Sorcha’s heels clattered on the tiled floor as she moved, all but drowning out the clump of Fiona’s boots.
“Did you start last week?” Sorcha asked as she filled up the kettle at the sink.
“Um, yes. Two days of induction, three more with Leylo watching over my shoulder. This week I fly solo.”
“Leylo’s great,” Sorcha said. “Here, give me your mug. Do you take sugar?”
Fiona parted with her mug, but only for the promise of more coffee. “One please. Were you away last week? I didn’t see you around.”
“Visiting the grandparents in Ireland and catching up on all the family feuds.” Sorcha wielded a teaspoon with speed and precision, Fiona noted with blurry fascination. “How do you like being an invigilator so far?”
She invested the name with an impressive amount of cheesy drama. “I got enough of a laugh from my friends when I told them about this job without resorting to the job title.”
Sorcha grinned and grabbed the kettle as it boiled. “Have you met the director, Ian? He says in the old days they were called proctors. People kept making proctologist jokes. They didn’t like changing the job title but honestly, what did they expect?”
Sorcha passed Fiona her mug. She blew on her coffee and took a test sip. It wasn’t great coffee, but Sorcha had managed to find the exact mix of milk and sugar that Fiona preferred. “Any second now, that’s going to be a lot better,” Fiona said.
“Hard to resist, isn’t it?”
“As good as it gets with instant, anyway,” Fiona said.
“I mean all the data we lock away.”
Fiona paused. “Um, I–”
“Oh don’t worry, I do it too.” Sorcha settled against the counter and brought her mug to her lips. “I mean, it’s all interesting. Some of it’s obviously nuts, but even that is entertaining. And on top of all that, it’s all forbidden.” She made a face over the rim of her mug.
Fiona sighed. “I keep reading the Midnight Eye. Whoever he or she is, they certainly know how to write a blog post that our search algorithms like to ban.”
“I read Midnight too,” Sorcha said. “A girl, I think. I assumed she was a vampire groupie at first, but she has too much insider knowledge.”
“A vampire? Really? I thought she must be just someone like us.” She tried to imagine Alice blogging. Last night I slaughtered half the important vampires in London. Here’s a list, along with the way I killed each one, in gratuitous detail.
“Reading anything interesting?” Sorcha asked.
Fiona weighed up the chances of being regarded as a crazy person if she admitted to the target of her search. She wanted her job at Cerberus to last long enough to figure out what came next for her. On the other hand, she had been trying to find the archipelago of seven islands mapped on Jessica’s wall for a couple of weeks now without success. A fresh perspective might help.
If Sorcha didn’t think she was crazy.
“I’m new to all this,” she said, “but I’m trying to find the dream of the capital city of Atlantis.”
Calum had reacted with scorn he’d only concealed for Tamara’s sake. Cecilia hadn’t taken it seriously. Tamara believed, but while Fiona considered her a good friend, she wasn’t sure how much trust she’d put in Tamara’s analytical skills.
“The mythical ancient civilisation in the Atlantic,” Sorcha said.
Fiona couldn’t tell if the amusement dancing in her eyes was of the ‘laughing at’ or ‘laughing with’ variety. “Opinion appears divided on whether or not it was real.”
“And you’re wondering if I think you’re nuts.” Sorcha shrugged, careful of the mug in her hands. “It seems to me that there are an awful lot of stories about sunken lands in the Atlantic. Like everyone remembers there was a story, but no one remembers what it was.”
If she thinks you’re crazy, she’s doing a good job of being polite about it, the critical voice in the back of her mind said.
“You do dream magic then?” Sorcha asked.
“Some,” Fiona said. “I’m still learning.” Still learning what she was capable of. She had been trained, but she remembered none of it.
“There’s plenty of that sort of work around, you know,” Sorcha said. “I could help you take a look if you like.” Her mouth quirked. “Unless you’re planning a career here at Cerberus Watch?”
“I’d appreciate that.” Maybe her current job could be a stepping stone to something else. If she didn’t qualify for whatever oneiromancer jobs were out there, she might at least get some ideas of what to work towards.
Sorcha pushed away from the side of the kitchen bench. “Let’s head back before Nathan is forced to notice we’re three minutes late.”
Fiona winced and followed Sorcha back to the agent floor. “Do you have, um, a speciality?”
Sorcha brandished her card at the reader beside the door. “Nothing in particular, just a few tricks. You know how it is.”
Fiona didn’t know how it was. Sorcha had been nice so far, but she didn’t want to appear more ignorant than she already had. “Mm.”
As soon as they passed through the doorway they realised something was wrong.
Fiona could hear a male voice crying in wordless pain. Everyone was on their feet, craning their necks to peer in the direction of the noise. Several people, Nathan include
d, had gathered by a cubicle not far from where Fiona sat.
She heard someone say, “Grab her legs!”
Holding her coffee mug close to her chest, she crept towards the commotion. Nathan had his phone out. “Ambulance please,” he said. His voice was flat.
And then she saw.
On the floor, a girl she thought was named Maleeha writhed against the two men holding her down. Leylo, who had sat with Fiona during her first few days, stood nearby, her hands pressed to her mouth. One of the managers arrived with the first aid kit, which was a green plastic case with a red cross on the side. He pushed through those standing around and stopped, clutching the case, staring.
Blood leaked from Maleeha’s eyes and nose.
Fiona turned to Sorcha and began to ask a question. But she choked the words down when she saw the expression on Sorcha’s face.
Her head was tilted back. Her mouth was open. Her tongue snaked back and forth across the bottom of her top teeth.
Sorcha draped an expression of concern across her features. “I wonder what’s happening to her.”
I bet she’s not wondering at all, said the little voice in the back of her mind.
This time she wasn’t so sure she was being paranoid.
The land beside the river formed a natural amphitheatre that overlooked the water. Fiona sat halfway up the hill on the thick, dewy grass. The Thames was many times wider than in her time, unbound by the centuries of construction that had brought its banks closer together. The sky above her was bright, but sunless. Below in the estuary, the tide was going out.
“Ravens,” Fiona said to her companion. “The Tower ravens. I know where we are.”
Ravens appeared and disappeared near the centre of the bowl on its natural stage. Sometimes there were only a few, at other times dozens. They cawed and croaked, took off and landed, strutted about and snapped their beaks.
“Odd,” Fiona said. “They aren’t dreams. I think they’re dreaming themselves here. Do ravens dream?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said her companion.
He was Rob’s and Julian’s age on this occasion, though he didn’t carry the worries they did. He lay back on the grass with his hands behind his head. The white toga he wore was marked with a black angular pattern around its edges. His feet were bare.
Immortal Make Page 9
