Immortal Make

by Sean Cunningham

  Jessica jogged over, tape-measure in hand. “I hope this means the rest of the house will open up soon.”

  Julian’s head whipped around. “The rest of the house?”

  “Uh huh. According to Mr Shell and Mr Beak, there’s a lab in here somewhere, where Professor Shrewsbury built them. I’ve been trying to find a way in there for ages.”

  “Jessica thinks there are entire wings of the house yet to be discovered,” Fiona said. “I have to admit, until this morning I didn’t take that seriously.”

  “Sounds like plenty of space for a pool room to me,” Rob said.

  “Pool sounds boring,” Jessica said. “You just hit balls with sticks. What’s fun about that?”

  “You’d like it, Jess,” Rob said. “You’d get to use geography–”

  “Geometry,” Julian said as he wandered the length of the room.

  “Yeah, geometry. To figure out how to bounce the balls off the sides and everything.”

  Jessica’s face settled into a thoughtful look. “Hm. Maybe I’ll give it a go. When are you getting a pool table?”

  “When we get a pool room. When will that be, Julian?”

  “Right after we get a gym.” He turned back from the far end of the room. “Everything’s fine here. It’s just a room.”

  “Well, I won’t say no to the extra space,” Amelia said. Her fingers writhed together as her gaze wandered around the room. “Do you think Mr Hawthorn will raise the rent because of this?”

  “And risk us notifying Ealing Council that he’s put an extension on the house without their permission?” Fiona said. “I don’t think so.”

  “We need to head for work,” Julian said. “I do think you’re completely safe, but let us know if you have any concerns.”

  Rob grinned at Amelia. “And let us know what you decide to do with your new pool room, yeah?”

  Fiona showed them to the door. “Thanks for coming over. I really didn’t know what to make of it.”

  “No worries,” Rob said, standing in the tiny front yard. Julian had already gone into their flat. “Your Mum doing okay?”

  Fiona frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  “She’s had some heavy stuff to deal with lately. You know, finding out about you and us and everything. Not a great time for her own home to go weird on her.”

  “No,” Fiona said, her expression softening. “I guess not.”

  As the elevator in the building where they worked rushed them towards the doom of a late arrival at the office, Rob said, “I have a plan.”

  “Brilliant,” Julian said. He leaned against the back of the elevator, eyes closed.

  “Just leave it all to me.” It was almost an hour after they should have been at their desks.

  Rob checked his phone again. He had three missed calls from Zoe last night, no messages. He had sent her a message in the morning after finding his phone, but she hadn’t responded. He was trying not to think about how angry she must be about the way he ran off.

  Her grandmother had been a werewolf. She’d seen it all before. Why had he run?

  Justine on reception was talking into her headset as they emerged from the elevator. She unlocked the door to the office for them without a pause. Also without a hint of pity, Rob noticed. He reminded himself his plan was good. It was the same plan as last time, which hadn’t worked, but he had high hopes this time.

  As though Justine had warned him, Herbert stood guard near Rob’s cubicle. His hands were draped behind his back. He dipped his chin and gazed up at them with bulging eyes like a dismayed poodle.

  Rob took the lead. “I’m sorry we’re late, Herbert. I lost it last night after I left the pub. Julian came with me this morning to find my phone and wallet and everything.” He lifted the plastic shopping bag in his right hand, which contained the shredded remains of the clothes he’d burst out of last night. “Took us a bit longer to find it all than I’d hoped. I know you need us here on time, but I figured we could do an extra hour tonight to make up for it, clear the backlog of emails or something.”

  Rob projected more confidence than he felt. That was half of the sale right there. Herbert let him hang. Judging from the twitches of his mouth, punctual Herbert was having an argument with human Herbert.

  “Perhaps in future,” Herbert said, “should the occasion arise, you or Julian could send me a text message to inform me of the circumstances.”

  Rob donned a big smile. “Thanks Herbert, we’d be happy to. I appreciate you going easy on us, matey.”

  “To work then, gentlemen.”

  As Herbert turned away, Julian said, “Herbert? Rob tells me you’re calming charm is quite a bit better than his. May I see it?”

  Herbert hesitated. “I would rather not take it off. The full moon is tonight and…”

  “That’s fine,” Julian said. “I’d just like a quick look.”

  Awkwardly, Herbert pulled his sleeve back and raised his arm. Julian stepped close and stretched his hand towards it. The thin chain snapped towards his fingers as though magnetised.

  “Rob’s right, this is excellent work. If you like I could email you the details of a reputable dealer I know with good ties to the werewolf world.”

  Herbert flushed. “I’m sure my partner and I would appreciate that, Mr Blackwood. Get settled for work please, both of you. We have calls queuing.”

  “I don’t know how you do that,” Julian said as they watched Herbert trot away. “I thought he hated us.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’ve still got squirrel breath,” Rob said. “Little bastards, I cleaned my teeth three times this morning. So, see you at lunch?”

  Rob swung into Julian’s cubicle. “How about the coffee shop for lunch and why are you looking at a car hire company in” – he squinted – “Reykjavik?”

  Julian sucked his cheeks in like he’d swallowed a lemon. “I’m going to Iceland.”

  “Right. Julian, I used up all my leave after we beat that wizard at Evelyn’s place. You had to take unpaid leave to take the same time off. So don’t go and tell me you’re suddenly feeling like doing the tourist thing.” He prodded Julian’s shoulder. “Friends don’t let friends face tentacled monsters alone. Remember that?”

  “I’m not going to Iceland for tentacled monsters,” Julian said.

  Rob sighed. “I thought we’d talked about how to build good lies. You’re still hopeless at it. Come on, tell me what trouble we’re in over lunch.”

  Julian kept giving off that same irritated smell as he pulled his coat on. In the elevator he said, “It’s the big secret, Rob. Are you sure you want to be involved?”

  “Remember the point I was just making about friends and tentacled monsters? Remember you were the first one to say it?”

  Julian made an exasperated noise. “Fine, I warned you.” But Rob noticed a tension leave the set of his shoulders. “Did you manage to chat to Zoe this morning?”

  “She’s not working today.” Rob kept his tone light, even though Zoe still hadn’t responded to his message. He tried to change the subject. “You getting messages from Evelyn?”

  Julian studied his profile, but said, “Four progressively more irritated messages, yes. She wants us to make time to establish and practice protocols for dropping monsters off to her.”

  “I thought she was kidding when she said that,” Rob replied. “Reverend protocols. Huh! Hope we don’t need them.”

  At the coffee shop where they often had lunch, as Rob attacked his third baguette, Julian pushed his phone across the table. The phone’s screen displayed the image of a black car. The angle of the grainy photo suggested it had been taken by a traffic camera.

  “Whu izz ib?” he asked, chewing.

  “A hire car,” Julian replied. A can of energy drink sat on the tiny table beside the plate bearing the second half of Julian’s sandwich. “It was near the Whitlocks’ mansion the night it was destroyed.”

  Rob hunched his shoulders and checked to see if anyone was listening. The coffee sho
p was full. Office workers crowded the tables, talking loudly over the noise of the coffee machines behind the counter. A queue of people waited to be served, most of them reading from their phones.

  “Swipe right,” Julian said.

  He licked mayo off his fingers and swiped the image right, missing Julian’s wince as he did so. The screen now showed the driver’s licence of a Tom Calder. Tom glowered at the camera and Rob could see he was well-built, whoever he was. Something about him tickled Rob’s senses. “He hired the car? Why you looking at him?”

  “He’s an associate of Crispin Chalk’s.”

  “How’d you get this?”

  Julian’s sigh was so quiet only Rob’s enhanced hearing allowed him to perceive it. “Jacob sent it through to me about an hour ago. I asked him to look into events surrounding the Whitlocks’ deaths.”

  Rob forgot his half-eaten baguette. “You went alone, didn’t you? He tried to kill us, remember?”

  “I’d rather hoped he was past that.”

  “Judging by your hangover, not so much I’m guessing.”

  Julian avoided answering by taking a bite out of his sandwich.

  Rob handed his phone back. “So this guy was in the area on the night of the – the explosion. That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “No, you couldn’t take it to a court of law or a council hearing, but I have a lower burden of proof. According to Jacob, Tom and a few others from Crispin’s circle of friends have booked flights to Iceland this Friday.” Julian tapped his finger against the table and Rob saw his tiredness slough away. “I think once Crispin made it onto the Shadow Council, he used his new status to check the library. They call it Storage. I think I know what book he read.”

  “How?”

  “Because I read it four years ago when I was trying to find out what Mitch meant to sacrifice me to. And that book leads to Iceland.”

  “What will they find there?”

  Julian spread his hands. “I don’t know. I know what’s there, but I don’t know what they want.” The tiredness settled back on him. More than just that, Rob thought. An air of defeat. “The power that burned the world twi– that burned the world long ago. What do they want with it?”

  “Kill off the rest of the Shadow Council and rule us all, maybe? If they’re blowing up mansions with everyone inside, can’t be anything good. So what’s the plan?”

  “I teleport us to Reykjavik. We hire a car and drive out to the site. It would be a bad idea to teleport in close to the maze spell that surrounds the site and I’ll need rest after the teleport. Once we’re done there, we drive back, return the car and if necessary rest overnight before I teleport us back to London.”

  “Teleporting, huh? Sure, why not? What do you have to do at this place we’re going?” He popped the last of his sandwich in his mouth.

  “I’ll blast the site with psychometric static. That should stop them from getting anything useful out of it. I have a spell I can use, with some preparation.”

  “We’ll have to take a sick day for it,” Rob said.

  “It can wait until the weekend,” Julian said. “The full moon is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, correct? That’s why Tom Calder and his friends won’t fly until Friday night. I don’t know what their plan is to deal with the maze spell, but best case scenario for them is weeks to unravel it. We can get in and out ahead of them on Saturday.”

  “Yeah, good. I’d rather not test Herbert’s patience again so soon.” Rob licked his fingers. “You know, I’ve always wanted to go to Iceland. Could even see the Northern Lights.”

  He got a ghost of a smile out of Julian, which he figured was a lot given how rough Julian looked. “Let’s hope for clear skies.”

  Rob could barely sit still in Mrs Prashad’s basement long enough to pull off his shoes. He was on his feet again as soon as they thumped to the floor. The basement was small and smelled of earth, of dust despite its owner’s best efforts, of the mould that had escaped her scourings. Rob prowled the room, windmilling his arms, trying to concentrate long enough to undo the buttons of his shirt.

  The full moon. The full moon. The full moon.

  The build-up had begun on the afternoon before the first night. The restlessness, the extra energy, the dread of losing himself for hours and the eagerness to do the same. And then on the first between day that followed, he had felt happy, unburdened, though the cause of those very feelings left him aware of his isolation. Until the build-up began again in the afternoon.

  He couldn’t help but look forward to the second night. It was the most intense. The self-loathing would come later but for that night the monster ruled inside him. For that night he wanted it to.

  He balled up his shirt and tossed it on the floor with the rest of his scattered belongings. That was when he heard the knock at the door.

  Rob snapped around towards the sound and dropped to his haunches, ready to spring. He heard the door open at the top of the staircase. A wedge of the light came cautiously down into the cellar. He smelled the spicy odours of Mrs Prashad’s cooking and the comforting scent of Mrs Prashad herself.

  And another scent that pulled him up onto the balls of his feet.

  “Rob? You have a visitor. She says she knows you.”

  Not here not here not here not here–

  “She says her name is Zoe. Should I tell her you can’t be disturbed?”

  For two days he’d been trying to reach her. He didn’t want her to go away. But he didn’t want her to see him like this.

  “Rob?” And then quieter, Mrs Prashad saying, “I’m sorry, it’s best you don’t go down.”

  He heard Zoe’s voice answer, gentle, insistent, though he couldn’t make out the words.

  “I’m sure you are,” Mrs Prashad said. “But I must ask you to leave.”

  “Wait!” The word came out as mush. He tried again. “Wait! Just wait a second!”

  He ran into the cage, slammed the door with a metallic crash, crunched the key to the locked position and flung it across the room. It struck the far wall and fell to the floor with a ringing sound.

  “Okay,” he called out. “Okay. She can come down.”

  He heard the creak of the door opening all the way. The wedge of upstairs light widened. Rob grabbed the bars of his cage as though trying to wrench them free. The footsteps on the stairs seemed to take forever to descend. Her smell grew stronger, that clear ocean scent.

  She wasn’t afraid.

  “Hi Rob,” she said from the bottom of the stairs.

  He pressed against the bars. His bare chest rose and fell as he breathed her in.

  “I know why you ran,” she said. “But you didn’t have to. I’ve seen all this before.”

  He realised he had to speak. “Yeah. I know. I just–” He couldn’t manage it in words. He shrugged.

  Zoe moved towards him, one slow step at a time. “The moon is just about to rise. You should change. You’ll feel better.”

  He would feel better. He wanted the release. But he didn’t want her to see him as a monster in a cage.

  She was halfway across the basement. Almost within his reach. He jerked back from the bars, all the way to the wall behind him.

  Zoe stopped. “It’s all right, Rob. I’m not afraid.” He saw her cheeks redden and her scent changed. “I’d like to see it. Can I watch you? Change, I mean?”

  He knew she must have seen it before. But not him. If he changed in front of her, how could she ever look at him again without remembering that? Without being reminded of watching his body twist and warp?

  Then he remembered the sight of Alice one night, not sleek and beautiful but grossly distorted, a thing of fleshy wings and a snouted face and limbs that bent the wrong way. He remembered Julian putting his arms around her and holding her close.

  Rob took a deep breath and found his voice. “All right.”

  He unbuttoned his trousers. And paused.

  “Um.”

  Zoe’s lips curved in a smile, one she was ob
viously fighting to keep from being a grin. She put one hand over her eyes.

  Rob quickly pulled his trousers off, bunched them up and shoved them through the bars of his cage. “Okay.”

  She lowered her hand as far as her chin. “Sticking with the boxers?”

  His face was burning, but he could feel a laugh inside. It was too wild for his liking so he kept it in, but he felt more himself for it. “I can afford to lose a pair of boxers.”

  Rob took long, deep breaths. He felt the monster come forward, slide right up under his skin. Zoe watched him, unblinking. He thought she was holding her breath.

  He changed.

  It hurt, but it was a welcome pain. He tore through that thin film of human flesh, swelling upwards, his fingers becoming claws, his chest and shoulders deepening, growing heavier. The bones of his face shattered and became a snout. Dark fur cut through his skin.

  He lifted his head and roared at the ceiling.

  He could exult in his freedom for only a moment. Zoe’s scent – so much stronger and richer now – reminded him of her presence. She stared up at him with eyes that were green like the sea in the sun.

  Wordlessly, she came to the bars of the cage. She reached her arm through.

  Full of wonder, Rob lowered his head. She touched his nose, ran her hand up to the smoothness across the top of his head, dug her fingers into the thicker fur on the back of his neck.

  She didn’t smell like prey. She smelled like something else entirely.

  “Amazing,” she said. “You’re amazing.”

  He settled down on his haunches and she brought her other hand up to touch him. He couldn’t believe she was there. He couldn’t believe the lack of horror on her face.

  It felt like the greatest thing anyone had ever done for him.

  Chapter 14 – Fiona

  Fiona’s hunt began outside the Cerberus Watch offices.

  She stood lookout across the street from the front door. Her back was to the wall and London workers streamed past her in both directions, hurrying through the evening wind for buses and trains. She had her phone pressed to her ear.