‘Quickly!’ the woman shouted again, and if Cass could have got his breath he would have screamed back, ‘What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do?’ but instead he just ploughed his feet through the mud and flung himself into the back of the car. She was driving away before his last leg was in, and that was fine with him.
The tramp leaned across him and pulled the door shut. Cass looked down at the bloody mess of his body. His shoulder felt like it was freezing and his eyes burned like ice. His breathing was rapid. So this was what it felt like to be shot. The world was getting dark at the edges and a wave of nausea made a lazy attempt to flood his system. The girl weaved the car expertly through the traffic. He wondered about asking where the fuck they were going, but couldn’t get the words out. Still, anywhere was better than Paddington Green nick.
‘They weren’t lying about you, son.’ The tramp beside him let out a hearty laugh. ‘You really do have the glow.’
‘Fuck the glow, ’ Cass was pleased to hear himself say. It seemed like a good alternative to there is no glow. The sense of self-satisfaction didn’t last long. Barely a moment later the darkness claimed him and he passed out. It came as something of a relief.
Mr Bright liked the corridors at night, when it was quiet. He’d smoked a cigarette on the roof – it wasn’t a cigar kind of evening – and then sat with the First for a while. Presently he’d go back to The Bank and carry on his paper trail from Mr Bellew’s accounts. Most of his followers had been the sick, and were no immediate threat now that their leader was, to all intents and purposes, gone. He’d decide what to do with them later.
It had been two days since they’d brought Mr Bellew in, and things were slowly calming down. They always did. He’d read about Jones’ escape in the papers and on the news, and then got the first-hand events from his various connections. He hadn’t had any doubt that Cass would get himself out of the situation, but he was curious about that car and who was driving it. It was no matter – he’d find out in due time. Jones was injured and would need to recover before he came after Mr Bright, which he surely would. In fact, he was banking on it.
He stopped outside one heavy door and slid open the panel on it. Mr Bellew sat curled up against the wall, strapped into a straitjacket. The restraint was unfortunate, but it stopped him scratching at his eyes. The big man’s mouth hung open slightly and a long strand of drool hung from it. At least he wasn’t screaming.
A brief wave of sadness washed over Mr Bright. Mr Bellew had been one of the finest: arrogant to the last, even as they strapped him down and told him to try for the walkways, he had smiled and laughed and told them he’d make it. As always, however, Mr Bellew had overstated his own abilities, and now here he was, with empty eyes and no Glow. He’d had a small last laugh, though. His facility in the old Underground tunnels had been found, but abandoned. According to the papers, Abigail Porter had died in the shootout – it amused him that she’d managed to fool Mr Bellew – but there were still two more out there, programmed to do whatever it was Mr Bellew had wanted of them. Still, they couldn’t stay hidden for ever.
He slid the hatch shut, leaving Mr Bellew to his madness, and headed for the lift. Thus far, he concluded, most things were going according to plan. Yes, there had been the odd, unexpected mishap, but all things considered, there had been no harm done.
Epilogue
Elroy Peterson couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t eat and he couldn’t do anything except see the colours behind his eyes. Terrible colours. He’d left the house earlier, and found himself standing by the tube station, totally confused and looking down at his Oyster card as if it could somehow tell him where he should be going. He should be going somewhere, he was sure of that. But where? It hurt to think.
He cried a lot when the house was empty. He hadn’t been to Uni for two days. What was the point? What could possibly be the point of all of this? He was crying now, standing in the bathroom at two in the morning, just staring at his reflection as if it could somehow tell him who he was. As if it could somehow fill the empty space inside him. Something had broken him; a part of him was missing. Sometimes he could hear himself screaming and the only way to stop it was to scream himself.
He lifted the knife and, looking down, slowly carved the only words that made sense into his naked chest. It didn’t hurt. Nothing could hurt compared with what was going on behind his eyes. He wondered about going back to his bedroom, but instead he lowered the lid on the toilet and sat down. He didn’t want to get blood on the carpet. He didn’t want to make a mess. He cut his wrists with no thought whatsoever, an absent gesture of an absent mind, and then leaned his head back against the cistern. It was cold as space. He didn’t cry any more after that.
When they broke the door down in the morning, despite his wishes not to, Elroy Peterson’s death had made quite a mess. The words clumsily carved into his chest were still legible though. They, not the blood that covered the pale and cracked tiles around his drained body, were what made his housemate scream.
Chaos in the darkness.
THE END
Acknowledgements
As always, a huge thank you to my editor Jo Fletcher and my agent Veronique Baxter for their continued support. You both rock. I also owe thanks this year to Ray and Matt Marshall at Festival Film for loving the first book enough to want to make television out of it. Best of luck with that, chaps! The longer that I write full-time the more I realise the importance of my writery friends – they’re a network of support I just couldn’t be without. As for all the real-life friends, thanks for making me take time out from the work to have some fun. You’re all the best. And a final thanks very much to whoever invented the Internet for making research so much easier. We writers all salute you.
SP
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Sarah Pinborough 2011
All rights reserved.
The right of Sarah Pinborough to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This ebook first published in 2011 by Gollancz
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 08952 5
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The Shadow of the Soul: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Two Page 35
