Julian snapped a word.
Writhing on the ground in front of him, its wings pinned against its sides, was a raven. It was even bigger than those monsters at the Tower of London.
Its cries were loud in the still air of the maze. Rob grabbed it and pinched its beak shut.
“What the fuck is this, Julian?” he asked. “Is this one of Crispin’s guys?”
Julian was slow to answer. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think so.”
“How can he change into a bird? I thought I was the only one who turned into something other than a wolf.”
Julian frowned at the raven. “I thought so too.”
Rob picked the struggling raven up with both hands. It wasn’t easy to hold onto, but he reckoned it would be impossible if it could move its wings. “Hey you, birdbrain. Shut up for a second or I’m having fried raven wings for dinner.”
The bird settled down. It fixed one black eye on him and Rob thought it looked furious.
“I’m going to let you go in a second,” Rob said. “Then we’re going to have a chat. You try to fly away, Julian here’ll zap you. See that thing on his hand? It’s great for plucking and deep-frying chickens. I bet it works just as well on skanky old ravens.”
The bird croaked with, Rob thought, seething hatred. But it didn’t try to wriggle free. He set it on the snow and stepped back.
The bird shifted back into a man in black windbreaker and ski pants. His arms were pinned at his sides. He staggered, then fell on his tail.
Rob had been right: seething hatred.
“Who are you then?” Rob asked.
“Hemming?” Julian said. “Yes, I’m getting Hemming.”
The man’s face went pale. Rob grinned. “He’s good at names, isn’t he? Want to tell us what you’re up to, Hemming? Or do I find some hot chips to go with my dinner?”
Hemming glanced from Rob to Julian.
“Don’t look to me for help,” Julian said. “I usually play bad cop.”
Hemming hissed under his breath. “I am spying on the intruders.” He spoke English with a flat accent.
“Shit,” Rob said. “They’re here already? Brits?”
“I think so,” Hemming said.
“Check,” Julian said. “I’ll cover him.”
Rob moved around Hemming’s back, leaving Julian a clear line of fire. He crouched down where Hemming had been lying and peered into the distance.
“Can’t see shit,” Rob said. The uneven slope vanished into the featureless grey distance.
“Let me see.”
Rob crawled back and grabbed Hemming by the collar. Julian took his place. He saw Julian raise one hand to his face.
“I can see a sentry moving around down there.”
“I was trying to figure out how to get closer,” Hemming muttered.
Julian rolled over and slid back down from the lip of the hollow. He tapped the ring of metal on his gauntlet’s palm. He looked and smelled worried.
“Thought you said it would take them weeks to get inside the maze,” Rob said.
“I did.”
“That can’t be a good sign,” Rob said. “So much for easy in, easy out. Too late for your plan to blow things up psychically down there?”
“We must assume they found what they were looking for. We need to know what that is and what they mean to do with the knowledge. Maybe …” His gaze wandered around the hollow as though searching for inspiration. “Maybe we could set up, follow them wherever they go, then grab one and interrogate them.”
An idea popped into Rob’s head. “How about we just ask them?”
“Oh yes, why didn’t I think of that?”
Rob grinned. “Let’s just walk down there and ask them, Julian.”
“That’s your plan? Get captured and see what they say?”
“Sure.”
He watched Julian’s disbelief become a more thoughtful expression. “Well …”
“You English are crazy,” Hemming said. “How do you know they won’t just kill you?”
“That would be pretty normal for us,” Rob said. “You got backup you can call in if things go pear-shaped on us, Hemming?”
Hemming’s expression twisted in scorn. “Why would I help you? You threatened to cook me. How do I know you are any better than the people down there?”
Rob had a hunch as to why Hemming was there. Julian had said the maze was protection. If whatever lay at the centre of the maze was that important, Rob figured there had to be an alarm set on it, which meant someone who came running when the alarm went off.
He pointed to Julian. “See him? His name is Julian Blackwood. He’s on your side, right?”
Hemming’s eyes narrowed. “You are a Blackwood?”
“Yes.”
“You are that Blackwood?”
A vein throbbed in Julian’s forehead. “Yes.”
Hemming said something under his breath. “I cannot get help here quickly. But if you let me move my damned arms I will help you if I can.”
Rob gave Julian the nod. Julian flicked his fingers. Hemming stretched his arms and shoulders and got to his feet. He put some distance between him and Rob, but he didn’t turn into a bird and fly away. Rob took that as a good sign.
Rob clapped his hands together. “All right then. Let’s go get captured.”
Chapter 19 – Rob and Julian
Rob bounced down the slope towards the grave-site at the heart of the maze, outdistancing his captor. He turned and laughed. “Keep up, will you?”
“No talking,” the man snapped. He smelled of a sweaty journey in a car of smokers and the tip of his nose was red with cold. A machine gun was slung over his shoulder. His accent was Leeds and a sneer twisted his face every time he heard Rob’s Manchester accent.
Rob grinned, waving his hands in a mocking gesture of surrender.
“How you doing there, Rob?” Julian asked. He walked ahead of his own captor who was human as well, though he carried a rifle instead of a machine gun. As well as exuding the same travel scents as machine gun guy, he smelled of the tomato sauce he’d spilled on the front of his parka.
“Never knew having a machine gun pointed at me could be so much fun.” Rob laughed again.
“I said no talking.” His captor was out of breath from trying to keep up.
“Keep it together, Rob,” Julian said. “I think the grave-site is messing up your head the closer we get to it.”
Rob flung his arms wide. “We should bottle this! Sell it on the werewolf black market. Is there a werewolf black market?”
Rob’s captor poked him with his machine gun. Rob snatched it out of his hands. The man gasped, staggered back with arms raised. The other one whipped up his rifle.
“Just kidding,” Rob said and tossed the weapon back to his captor.
“Please pardon my friend,” Julian said. “I think this is the first time he’s been taken prisoner.”
The man with the machine gun levelled it at Rob, fear-stink wafting off him. “If he tries that again, I’m putting a bullet through his leg.”
“Yes, please shoot the werewolf,” Julian said. “That can only end well. Take us to your leader please, before Rob floats off the ground.”
The two captors exchanged a worried look. Rob thought that was funny as hell. “Take us to Crispin!” He spun and raced ahead again.
The path they followed was a gully of snow and gravel, sides rising in rough black walls half again his height. It twisted to the left and then Rob was out in the open.
He stood near the edge of an open bowl more than twenty metres across. The smell of the sea was stronger, though he still could not hear it. Half a dozen people moved across the snow-covered bowl, tending a series of wooden staves thrust into the ground. Two of them moved like they weren’t quite human, but weren’t quite werewolves. A big green tent was set up on the far side of the bowl.
The whole place had a tangy magical smell to it. He thought those wooden staves were the source of some of
it, but not even most. The majority, old and crackly and all around, came from the ground. It had him standing on his toes. It pushed a laugh up from his core that he had to tamp back down. It felt laden with significance, with meaning. He guessed that was what Julian planned to blast with psychic static.
Rob’s captor came huffing up behind him. “Move,” he said. He didn’t poke Rob with the machine gun again.
Rob loped further into the bowl. The people working had noticed him and one of the almost-werewolves went running for the tent. Rob heard the crunch of Julian’s and his captor’s footsteps as they came up behind him.
“Are we here?” Rob asked.
Julian nodded. “This is it. The grave-site. The centre of the maze.”
“No talking,” Julian’s captor said.
Julian’s face betrayed a flicker of utter contempt before returning to what Rob thought of as his professional we’re-in-the-middle-of-it expression. The man with the rifle had Julian’s satchel slung over his shoulder. Julian had packed his weapons into it before they’d allowed themselves to be captured.
Rob strode further into the bowl, towards the cluster of staves in the middle. The men who stood there shifted in alarm, glanced at each other and the green tent. “Hi fellas,” he said with a wave. “We’re here to see Crispin Chalk. He in the tent? Okay, we’ll just show ourselves in. Don’t worry, we’re just here to talk.”
He was halfway to the tent when a woman dressed entirely in white cold-weather gear ducked through the flap and straightened.
Rob stopped in his tracks.
“Zoe?”
Her head snapped up.
Rob caught her scent. “No you’re not – What the fuck?”
She had Zoe’s face and height. She moved like Zoe and a few loose strands of the same brown hair stuck out from her hood. But her scent was like a wind over a sea of long grass. Her eyes were as blue as the sky.
Her surprise faded. A smile of understanding curled her lips.
Rob’s captor caught up with him again, breathing hard this time. “I’m sorry Astra, he–”
She stopped him with a raised hand. Her gaze never shifted. “So you’re the ones she ran to.”
“Uh, Julian? What’s happening?” Rob felt like his feet were sinking into the ground, towards a thing of teeth and claws that reached up through the stone for him.
Julian put a hand on Rob’s arm. “Astra, is it? Would you mind giving me a moment to see if I can straighten Rob’s head out? This place is having a funny effect on him.”
Astra appeared on the verge of laughing. “Oh I know. Go ahead.”
“Rob, look into my eyes. That’s it.”
Rob felt Julian unsheathe the force of his will. He spoke words that Rob heard as mumbles. What felt like a vacuum cleaner sucked away the sparkly cobwebs of dizzy happiness in Rob’s head. He put a gloved hand to his forehead. “That’s better. What the hell was that?”
“It bleeds up from the grave beneath us,” Astra said, still smiling. “We all feel it to some degree. Not as much as you though.”
For the first time Rob noticed that the almost-werewolf who had gone into the tent had come up behind Astra. He was the same person whose driver’s license Julian had shown him back in London. “Tom Calder, right? And Astra. You don’t happen to have a sister, do you Astra?”
The others from around the bowl had drawn into a loose circle around them. They’d each picked up a weapon of some kind and held them with a familiarity that promised they knew how to use them.
“You mean Zoe,” Astra said. “So you do know her. Did she send you here? No, of course not.” She pointed at Julian. “You know the way, Julian Blackwood. And you must be Rob Cromwell. You’re one of us.”
Her eyes were as fascinating as Zoe’s. “Am I? Lot of guns pointed this way if I’m one of us.”
“Lower your weapons, everyone.”
Tom puffed up. “Astra–”
“I said lower your guns.” The sudden change from velvet to steel made her people tense. They obeyed fast, Rob noticed. For all that they were a bunch of tough guys with guns and she was a small, unarmed young woman, she had their respect. Or maybe their fear.
“So is Crispin here?” Rob asked.
“Who?”
“Going to be like that, is it? How’d you get in here so fast? We figured you’d still be knocking at the edge of the maze.”
“We’re not without our resources.” She started pacing around to his side. He couldn’t get it out of his head how like Zoe she was. “So you’re a full werewolf. And maybe more. Rumour says you can turn into other things.”
“Are you like Zoe then?” Rob asked. “Were you at the ceremony too, when the Covenant crashed it?”
Astra stiffened. “Well well, you and Zoe must be close.” Her gaze snapped to Julian. “I can hear you.”
“I suppose you’re not human then.” He saw Rob’s questioning expression. “I was subvocalising a veracity spell.”
“I’ll order you shot if you try that again,” Astra said. The steel was back, this time with a jagged point.
Julian shrugged.
Rob said, “We came here to ask you what you’re doing, Astra. There’s a lot of secrecy and security around this grave. It’s not a good idea to be here.”
She was actually angry when she turned back to him. “Is that what he told you?” She stabbed a finger at Julian. “The warlock? The maintainer of the status quo?”
“I’m a customer service executive, not a maintainer of–”
Astra rounded on him. “You’re full of bullet holes if you don’t stop talking.”
Julian rolled his eyes.
It wasn’t like Julian to keep needling someone and that worried Rob. When the time came for Rob to do the talking, Julian usually let himself fade into the background. He wondered if the maze was getting to Julian too.
He tried to regain Astra’s attention. “So what’s the big deal about this place then?”
Astra’s anger melted away as quickly as it had appeared, replaced with a glow of triumph. “It’s ours, Rob. It belongs to our kind, yours and mine, all of us here who are like us or who were supposed to be.”
The closer Astra drew to him, the more he forgot the differences between her and Zoe. The more his mind went where it shouldn’t. Rob tried to focus. “I still don’t get it.”
“But you can feel it.” She was so close now she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. “We all can. Tom who only turned half way. Luke and Charlie, who were born to it but denied the turning rite. And you, you who have gone further than any of us, further than any werewolf.”
She touched her gloved hand to his chest. Even through all the layers of clothing he wore, that touch made his pulse race.
Like being with Zoe.
Rob cleared his throat. “I think you’re maybe giving me a bit too much credit for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What’s this spot got to do with werewolves then?”
She stepped back and flung her arms wide and it seemed to Rob she almost shook off the pull of the earth. “This grave is where we come from, Rob. This is the grave of the being from whom we were made.”
Rob felt he’d been doing a good job of prodding Astra into telling him what they wanted to know. But what Astra had said, what the bowl between the mountains and the sea was, that rocked him back on his heels. He made the mistake of looking away from Astra, of turning to Julian. “What?”
Julian ignored Astra too. There was no pity in his expression. There never was, which Rob had always appreciated. But this time there was regret. “It’s true.”
Astra snatched at Rob’s parka. “See? See? He knew and he never told you. What kind of a friend is he, Rob? He’s been using you this whole time. He’s been controlling you by keeping things from you.”
“No, he–”
She twisted him around to face Julian. She was so much smaller than him, but she had the strength of two people and right then, Rob had none. “That’s wh
at his kind does to us, Rob. Witches and warlocks have been controlling us for more than a hundred years. Doling out their precious help when they please, demanding so much in return. He’s from one of the old families, Rob. One of the families that stole our progenitor from us. Did he tell you the grave is empty?”
“Empty? What–”
“Not even that? They stole it and locked it away from us. So they can control us. The Blackwoods and the Mandellans and the Whitlocks, this is what they to do us.”
But Astra had mentioned the Whitlocks and that kicked Rob’s wits back into gear.
“Is that why you killed the Whitlocks and burned their house down? Because you hate them this much?”
Astra’s people stirred around them. A growl rattled in Tom’s throat. Astra’s eyes changed colour, darkened from sky blue to stormy grey. He felt the monster inside him respond, as though recognising a challenge. Goosebumps rippled across his skin. The change was very close.
But she caught herself. “That was strategy. Zoe told you about the Covenant? Fanatics who hunt down and kill people like you and me? They’re strong in Europe, Rob. It’s only a matter of time before they cross the Channel.”
“Hasn’t happened yet,” he said.
“But it will.” Her small hands made fists on his chest. “The old magic families think they can keep us safe by keeping us hidden, but they’re fooling themselves. Everyone in the world has a camera in their pocket and they can upload a photo onto the internet in seconds. How long before a picture of one of us leaks out into the world? How long before it happens so often the Shadow Council can’t stop them all? When it does, Rob, what happened to Zoe and I will be just the start of things.”
He discovered his hands were gripping Astra’s shoulders. When did he do that? He was back in the cage in Mrs Prashad’s, leaning against the bars so Zoe could run her hands through his fur. He wanted to close his arms around her and never let anything hurt her again.
“They’ll hunt us.” Her voice was a whisper. “Like beasts. With fire and silver. With their frightened righteousness. They’ll hunt us down until they’ve killed every last one of us. The Shadow Council can’t stop them, Rob. It’s up to us. We can make Britain a fortress, safe for our kind.”
Immortal Make Page 20
