“How long do you think we have?” Charity asked, over the muted screams still coming from the other flat.
“No more than an hour,” Isaac said.
Charity licked her lips. “Plenty of time.”
The war began in Temple.
Nick Bond had been at the bar with his workmates for fifteen minutes when he saw her. He knew how to charm women, but this one had him under her spell halfway through the drink he bought her. He had slept with far better-looking women, but this one possessed an animal magnetism that consumed him. When she whispered in his ear that she wanted to leave, he even forgot to say goodbye to his friends.
But when the taxi door closed and the car pulled away, she grabbed him with astonishing strength and slammed his head against the window. He didn’t know how much time he lost before he could slur out words, asking her what she wanted.
“You, sweetie.” The aggressive sexiness that had first drawn him to her was still there, but the way she looked at him, he didn’t feel like a man. He felt like meat. “Your law firm’s clients, my family and I have a lot of history with them.”
Nick Bond was a senior partner at his firm. He and his team were responsible for managing some of the firm’s biggest clients. He was the only one who knew those clients were vampires.
But he didn’t know what the woman who’d kidnapped him was until later, when she showed him.
And the war began in Canary Wharf. Manuel Riera knew something was wrong from the first line of coke. He drove the heel of one hand against the bridge of his nose and clutched at the back of the toilet for support with the other. The cubicle spun around him and he slid to the floor.
He was staring at the ceiling when his dealer of four years, Ayaan, slipped over the top of the cubicle and landed on the toilet. Manuel goggled. He had never seen anyone move like that.
Ayaan’s blue eyes were as bright and cold as burning copper as he slapped him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Manny. The little extra we put in your weekend usual, you’ll give us all the account passwords we want without us having to hurt you. Though we might anyway, just for fun.”
Manuel didn’t know some of the clients of his investment bank weren’t human. One of Ayaan’s friends took great delight in telling him later.
And the war began in Dartford. Felix Willems always made a point of walking from Dartford train station to the home where he lived with his wife and two teenage sons. It was a forty-five minute walk, the perfect antidote to a day spent sitting at a desk crunching numbers.
Felix had known all along who he did the bookkeeping for. He also understood what it meant when, twenty minutes from home, a huge grey wolf padded out of the bushes and onto the path in front of him. He knew he couldn’t outrun it, but he looked behind him anyway.
Two more wolves blocked the path behind him.
Beneath Trafalgar Square, Evelyn perched on a stool in her control room. Her gaze remained fixed on a monitor, where the transcription of a seer’s mutterings scrolled by.
“It’s clever,” she said. “Hitting the vampires in their human support network. They so hate doing all the mundane work themselves.”
“You have to give Antiere Edwardes credit,” Trajan Blackwood replied. His voice came through an open phone line. “He knows his people would lose a face-to-face confrontation with the vampires. Not like some of the more reactionary elements in the werewolf dynasties.”
The people the werewolves had kidnapped were key to the vampire business empires. Usually they had a shadow, a low-ranking vampire who kept watch on them. But those vampires had all been called in for the main action.
“And he’s clearly taken the time to lay plans,” Evelyn said. “He knows the vampires well enough to know they’d pull their babysitters.”
The seer was a Blackwood. Even Evelyn knew little about the inner workings of Britain’s oldest magic family, but she understood that they had nurtured a breakaway bloodline with oracular talents, preserving and improving it over many generations.
The seer was at the London Blackwood residence, or at least Trajan had hinted so. Evelyn didn’t know if it was a man or a woman, or even if there was more than one. The seer or seers cast their minds out across the city. They found the spikes of violence between vampires and werewolves. Evelyn believed an interpreter was transcribing their responses. The text scrolling down her tablet was far too logical and orderly for a seer’s direct input.
“But it isn’t the main event,” Alexander said. “Have my son and his friends left Ealing yet?”
Evelyn glanced at another console. “No, I – Wait. I can see a teleport signature.” The numbers on the screen jittered and jumped. “They’re out in Essex. And–”
Throughout her control room, green lights blinked to amber. Cold brushed her skin, like a shift in the wind, though much of her skin was numb from decades of fleshweaving. The green crystal in her witch’s ring let out a high, shivering note of sound.
“You all felt that?” Evelyn asked.
“We did,” Trajan said. “They’ve begun their ritual.”
“You’re taking a big risk, Alexander,” Evelyn said. “I know Fiona killed a wizard, but we know so little about her.”
“Let us hope,” Alexander said, “that old Hawthorn knows what he’s doing.”
Chapter 31 – One Trick
Julian drew his gun as soon as the teleporter dropped them off. Of the others, only Jessica and her automatons recovered as quickly as he did.
They stood beside a long fence, two flat wooden beams nailed to wooden posts. Fallen beams spoke of long neglect, as did the high grass that shifted and whispered in the field beyond. A narrow structure rose above them, canted at a slight angle, a dark shape against the eerie glow that lit the clouds above. Julian supposed it was an air control tower, if the field was an old airfield.
The hangar was a black hump. It could have been a large rock worn down by the ages, had its curve not been so regular. If it had windows, no light shone from them. If its door was open, it opened in a direction Julian could not see from where he stood.
He scanned it all: the tower, the field, the hangar. All of it, searching for enemies who lay in ambush, for traps laid in the hissing grass. All of it, before he let his gaze be drawn to the sky.
The sky above them was lit with ghostly radiance.
“Yeah, I don’t like the looks of that,” Rob said. He was already in his werewolf shape. Like the others, he craned his head back to stare at the clouds.
“Do we need to worry about it?” Fiona asked.
In the sky above, the clouds had taken geometric shapes. They formed concentric patterns around a single point. That point shone brighter than the moon with ghostlight.
Julian counted shapes, counted their sides. He could interpret some of the ritual’s geometry from the display in the sky.
“It’s just a side-effect of their ritual,” Jacob said. “We can carry on.” Julian let him have it. He didn’t think Fiona would fall for his showing off.
Fiona didn’t hesitate. “Alice, Rob, scout ahead. Find us a way in but don’t let them see you. The rest of us will follow and stay together. Beak, you circle above us and keep an eye out for anyone coming at us.”
“Gotcha,” Rob said. He and Alice exchanged a glance. Rob shifted from his werewolf to his wolf form and loped away towards the left side of the hangar. Alice had shifted into her monstrous bat form before they arrived. She skimmed away across the ground, using her wings to guide her.
“Don’t fall into any gulleys, Shell,” Mr Beak said. He launched himself into the air with a rattle of glass feathers.
Other sensations trickled into Julian’s awareness. The wind through the tall grass, the dark bushes growing in the untended fields – not a whisper, he wouldn’t call it that. A presence.
Angry. Upset. Like a nest of ants before a storm, or a forest ahead of a forest fire.
“Julian? Are you coming?”
He blinked. “Right with you.”
<
br /> Jacob fell in beside him as they followed the fence line. “Try to keep it together, will you?”
Julian didn’t rise to the bait. He was too distracted by the rustling life around him, by the concepts the shapes of the cloud implied.
“That show upstairs will bring everyone running,” Jessica said.
“I agree,” Fiona said. She carried the notepad Julian had given her. “We need to hit hard and fast.”
They reached the side of the hangar without drawing attention. Julian could feel the ritual inside tug at his senses. The sense of the titan’s corpse resonated in his skull.
Just another combat drop, Julian, he told himself. As if any of those had been standard.
Rob and Alice came back at the same time. “They sealed up the hangar door with sheet metal,” Alice said, “but they built a door into it, big enough for trucks. It’s around the corner.” Her fangs made her sound like her mouth was full of mush. “They haven’t pulled the door down all the way.”
“Amateurs,” Jacob said. “In too much of a hurry to get started.”
“Show me,” Fiona said.
Julian followed the others along the side of the hangar. He couldn’t shake off the feeling he was followed in turn, that the green life in the night behind him rode over his shoulder. He had put off thinking about what lay ahead, but it was too close now.
One trick, he thought.
The vehicle door was a dark cave in the vertical cliff of the hangar’s front. Its wide roller-door had only been pulled halfway down, as though it had stuck. Dim light came from within, enough for them to see a car and a van parked inside.
“Shading wards,” Jacob said. “I can feel them around the building.”
“Will we set off an alarm if we walk through the doorway?” Fiona asked. When he shrugged, she turned to Julian.
“Irrelevant,” he said. “Unravelling alarms would take too long. If we hear an alarm, go hard and fast like you said.”
He admired her control. If she was afraid – and she had to be, as they all were – she had it well hidden beneath a layer of steely anger. “Alice, Rob, you’re in front again. Jess, stay close.”
“Mr Shell and I have got you covered, Fiona,” Jessica said.
“That’s not what I – Fine.”
Jessica smirked.
Rob and Alice paused on the door’s threshold. She furled her wings while he pushed upright from his wolf to his werewolf form. They nodded to each other and sprang through together.
Julian sensed no change in the spells around the hangar. He said so, adding, “They must have put everything into concealment.”
“Works for me,” Fiona said.
By the time they were alongside the two vehicles, they could see the source of the lights in the sky. The ghost machine and the six occupied chairs around it gleamed. Brighter still was the ghost of Savraith, floating directly above Zoe. Streamers of light rippled down around her. From Zoe, they flowed forward into a black sarcophagus. The brightest light came from within it, a light that shifted in colour and intensity moment by moment. At the other end of the sarcophagus, surrounded by moving lights like a whirlpool of blazing stars, was Crispin Chalk.
Julian put his free hand on Fiona’s shoulder. “Let me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Stop the ritual.” He lifted his gun.
“Oh,” she said. “Subtle.”
He stepped in front of her. Rob and Alice fell back to either side. Julian let his will flow into the weapon, let some of what little strength he had left flow along the psychometric channels worked into the iron. His lips moved as he whispered words of empty spaces, of nullifying voids.
He squeezed the trigger.
The bullet cracked the air. His shot was perfect. It flew straight into the electric space between Zoe, Savraith and the sarcophagus.
It exploded black.
The ritual spell rebounded from the void. It rocked Zoe back onto the balls of her feet. Above her, the ghost of the wizard billowed like a sail catching the wind. Paper spells tied to the cables between the ghost machine and its ring of chairs burst into flame and the bone charms came to life, to scuttle away like beetles.
On the other side of the void, the sudden release of pressure pulled Crispin hard against the side of the sarcophagus. He hung over the edge, his head inside it, as though it had half swallowed him.
Julian fired again.
Flame bloomed three feet short of Zoe. A globe of pearly energy rippled around her – the shot didn’t make a dent.
But he’d expected that. He’d read Zoe’s distrust of Crispin and the others in the shapes of the clouds.
When Zoe swung towards them, Savraith’s ghost did too. He thought for a heartbeat that she’d lose it, that she’d change into the were-lion the others had described. That the ghost would be free of her control.
“Julian,” Fiona said.
“Wait.”
But Zoe held on. By her fingernails, Julian suspected, having lived around Rob for a while. She held on. When she started loping towards them, the ghost glided in her trail.
“Get around us if you can,” Julian said and moved ahead of the others.
“You’ve got to be out of your fucking mind.” Jacob sounded rattled. Julian didn’t think he’d ever heard him speak that way before. “She can probably spit more power than you’ve got in your entire body right now.”
“Quite so,” Julian said. He cast one last look at Rob. He was hunched low, shoulders up and ears flat. “Don’t worry, Rob. I’ll take care of this.”
Rob shuddered, as though about to change back into his human shape. He nodded once.
Julian started moving. Straight at the storm of power rolling towards him.
“Kalibus,” he whispered. “Estom. Vicandiar. Sabaeon.”
One trick.
Evelyn sprang from her stool as a new alarm sounded. “What in the name of–”
“What is it?” Trajan asked over the phone.
She grabbed a lever on one of the oldest consoles in the facility. When it wouldn’t budge, she tried with both hands.
“Julian,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Fiona resisted the urge to shred pages from her notepad. Julian holstered his pistol as he walked to meet Zoe, then drew his sword. The gesture had a practiced formality to it. The sword reflected rainbow glimmers of the halo of ghostlight blazing around Zoe.
“I wonder what he has in mind,” Sorcha said at her side.
Fiona didn’t jump. She was too nervous to be pleased with herself. “He knows what he’s doing.” No one else appeared to have noticed Sorcha, so Fiona guessed their conversation was private.
The writing on Sorcha’s face moved, like someone flicking through pages of a book. “He may be a Khadian battle mage, but the shapeshifter will crush him like a bug.”
She had no idea what Julian had planned. Maybe all he meant to do was hold Zoe, trusting Fiona to use the distraction.
Beyond them, around the ghost machine, the men strapped into the big chairs had begun to recover.
She had to tap Alice on the shoulder to get her attention. Alice’s eyes shone like firelight. She quivered with the urge to attack. But she nodded and Fiona knew she could count on her.
Julian sent his voice to Zoe. “You should give up now.”
Zoe laughed. “You’re barely able to stand. Hm, don’t I know that sword? It’s been on my side so far.”
They stopped, a dozen feet of concrete floor between them. A high-pitched sound went through his sword, a sympathetic vibration in response to either the power rippling around Zoe or that coming from the sarcophagus. He shifted his grip and let it gather. But it wouldn’t be his main source of strength.
Zoe continued to speak. Something about threats from the continent, the shambles that was Britain’s shadow world, the need for real strength, not the illusion of the Shadow Council. Julian ignored it. It wasn’t important.
He opened himself inst
ead to that which had followed him into the warehouse.
This is the power that burned the world twice. Do you remember it? In the deepest rings of the oldest trees. In the memory each seed carries when it falls to the earth. In the instinct that drives animals to prepare for the change of seasons.
This is the power that burned the world twice. I’m going to stop it if I can.
If you help me.
It poured into him. The dark green of the forests. The warm blood of those that lived on branch and under root. The long, slow heartbeat that measured itself in human lifetimes. The tug of the tides. The pulse of day and night.
His strength returned.
Zoe saw it. She raised a hand. Savraith’s ghost did too. The ghost’s power blasted forth.
Julian raised his left hand. Lightning crackled from his gauntlet.
The two streams of power met in the space between them. The explosion was white, shattering into unearthly colours at its edges. The sound was thunder. Julian could hear nothing else.
He lifted his voice and pressed his will against hers. The storm of lightning crackled and grew. Julian’s arm was jerked sideways as Zoe flexed against him. He pulled it back.
The concrete floor cracked and bent. The force of their striving wills pushed it away in riven chunks. The hangar’s old electrical systems burned with spillover. Lights flickered on, flared bright, exploded in showers of glass.
He matched her for what felt like an hour.
It was barely twenty seconds.
She pushed the point of shattered light where his lightning met hers. Pushed it back towards him. Julian’s shoes scraped across concrete. He shifted his feet, braced himself. His arm bent. Sweat ran down his face.
He swept his sword up. His voice was hoarse as he shifted from attack to defence. Zoe’s blast of ghost electricity slammed into the shield he wove out from his sword. Julian gasped in pain as the force hit him. He pressed his left hand against the flat of his sword to brace it. It began to glow with purple light as it absorbed what Julian’s ward couldn’t deflect.
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