The Great and Dangerous

by Chris Westwood

  ‘Me? I’m always discreet.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  Seated in the back next to me, Becky rested her hands on her bandaged knees, watching the road with misty eyes.

  ‘It makes no sense,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘Why would a well-to-do man like that walk into a building with a pack full of explosives and take so many with him?’

  ‘How do you know he was well off?’ I asked.

  ‘He lived there too, didn’t he, and those apartments aren’t cheap.’

  ‘Suppose someone put the idea in his head, like that 3624 at Old Street.’

  ‘Anything’s possible,’ Mr October said. ‘The thought could have been instilled years ago by something he read or overheard. It could have come from a family member, a friend or total stranger, and slowly growing and growing until it reached fruition today. Or it could have come to him recently, out of nowhere and fully-formed, while he sat in a college class or rode a bus home.’ He braced himself as Lu took a corner at terrifying speed. ‘We’ll never know. We ask these questions because we need to make sense of our world – but I’ve been here a long time and it never made much sense to me.’

  ‘So what about him?’ Becky said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The assassin. The bomber. Are we supposed to help him after what he did?’

  ‘His name’s on our list.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Our job is to send the departed along,’ Mr October said. ‘What happens to them after that is out of our control.’

  Becky was clearly unsatisfied with this and sat in silence the rest of the way. It wasn’t an easy question, though. Questions like that could make you crazy if you thought about them too hard and too long.

  A dense mushroom cloud hung over Stratford, rising from the apartment block’s blackened shell, smothering the sky and sucking light from the air. Emergency services were working flat-out around the building when we turned into the car park. The last fires were under control, but the block looked as brittle as charcoal. One firm push and it might crumble apart.

  ‘It looks like the end of the world,’ Becky said, and I thought, for the people inside, it is.

  Other teams, drafted in at short notice, were on their way. The first of them were already here. We parked beside a black SUV as Joe Mort and three junior field agents stepped from it. Joe nodded hello and put on sunglasses to shield his eyes from the gritty air.

  ‘Like a desert storm,’ Joe said, brushing dust from his usually immaculate sleeve. ‘So how’s things, old timer? Good to see you back in the saddle.’

  ‘Oh, could be better, could be worse,’ Mr October said, watching the rescue teams. ‘But not much worse.’

  ‘Shame you had to come back to this,’ Joe said. ‘Biggest salvage operation we’ve seen for a time.’

  The other members of Joe’s team were Wes Carlisle and Curtis Noonan, whose keen eyes and sharp suits were a match for Joe’s, and new recruit Kate Stone, a chestnut-eyed girl with spiky brown hair who wore a black jumpsuit and Doc Martens. Kate looked about the same age as Becky and me and had been enlisted by Joe on Sukie’s recommendation. Joe Mort’s was a pretty slick team.

  Together the teams crossed the car park. Mounds of wreckage discharged by the blast covered the ground in front of the former apartment block – chunks of masonry and timber, furniture and electrical goods, a smouldering teddy bear, a melted computer, and two thirds of a hand-painted banner which read, ‘Give London back to Lon—’. The rest had been burnt away.

  Sirens wailed. Black ash and soot drifted down. The fumes of burning metal and gasoline clogged my throat and I had to shield my eyes against the dust as we neared the building, clambering up and over piles of rubble.

  Another three Ministry vehicles swung in quick succession into the car park, headlights flaring in the fog. Between them they carried twelve occupants, eight of them armed Vigilants, whose presence here could only mean the enemy were active on the scene. If the Lords of Sundown had seemed quiet lately then perhaps this was why. They’d been saving themselves for today, for something big.

  We crossed the forecourt to the blown-away security entrance. Exposed girders and cross-beams and lengths of melted cabling jutted from the walls. Emergency teams swarmed everywhere, blocking entrances, their walkie-talkies buzzing, their boots grinding over cinders and glass.

  ‘How are we supposed to get in?’ I asked Mr October. ‘I mean, without being seen or stopped?’

  ‘There’s always a way,’ he said. ‘We had a case last month when a light aircraft hit a building on the Thames. That was a tragic accident, of course, but we gained entry quite freely that night, as we will now.’

  ‘But how?’ Becky said, eyeing two cops who were marching towards us, yelling and waving.

  Mr October looked them straight in the eye and lifted a hand, snapping his fingers together: clickety-clack.

  As he did, everything stopped. The rescue workers froze in mid-stride. The mushroom cloud, the million clumps of ash drifting down, an arc of water the fire brigade were directing at an upstairs window – everything held its place and stood still.

  For a moment I thought Becky was frozen too, for she didn’t move a muscle when Mr October called, ‘Now!’ and waved us forward. She stared at the scene with unblinking eyes.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I told her. ‘I’ve seen this before. It’s just one of the things he does.’

  We wound our way around a crush of fire workers who were suspended halfway inside, halfway outside the lobby, and stepped in through the hole in the wall where the door had been.

  It felt like the dead of night inside, everything scorched and reeking of burning. One lift door was blistered black from top to bottom, the other was missing. Joe Mort waited by the stairwell while we found our flashlights and Mr October dispensed breathing masks from a supply inside his coat.

  ‘The stairs are the only way up,’ Mr October told the assembling teams. ‘Keep your wits about you. There may be Deathheads or Mawbreed here. Everyone ready?’

  ‘Ready,’ we murmured, disjointedly.

  I looked back across the lobby, drawn by the sudden return of noise outside. Shouts and running footsteps and crackling walkie-talkies signalled the end of the big freeze, but no one would stop us now.

  Our lights searched the darkness as we started up, Joe’s team leading. The stairwell stretched above us like the building’s great choking throat, ash-black snow whirling in the beams. At the first turn of the stairs we stalled, hearing whispers and howls far up in the darkness, and one guttural sound that began as a growl and ended as a long drawn-out belch.

  ‘Mawbreed,’ said Lu.

  Everyone tensed. The Vigilants gave me purposeful looks as they locked and loaded their rifles.

  ‘How come they’re here so soon?’ said Kate Stone. ‘Did they know in advance?’

  ‘Maybe they saw the list,’ Becky said.

  ‘How could they? It’s classified.’

  ‘Maybe it was leaked. Lists have been leaked before. Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Infernal Enquiries will look into it,’ Mr October said. ‘Joe’s team, take this floor. We’ll take the next. Rusty? Check the third,’ he called to the third team leader, a square-jawed military type with crew cut ginger hair. ‘Vigilants – start at the top and work your way down. When you’re done, convene in the lobby.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Copy.’

  ‘Let’s kick some enemy butt,’ enthused Rusty, chomping at the bit.

  ‘A little propriety, please,’ Mr October said, and we continued upstairs towards the unknown.

  Moments after Joe’s agents turned off along the first floor, the muffled thud of an explosion echoed up the stairwell behind us. On the second level we passed a wall sign that read: APTS 5-8. Mangled pieces of a fire door lay in a tarry smoking pile where the stairs turned up another flight.

  There were four apartments on our floor, two on
each side of a hall space where a large central section of floor was missing. Steel rods and copper cables poked up from the hole. All four apartment doors had been extinguished, leaving four yawning cave mouths. As far as I could tell above the noise of sirens outside, the enemy were inside at least two of them.

  Mr October indicated the space where the floor had been. ‘We’ll have to edge round. Becky, we’ll take the two on the left. Lu and Ben, check the others.’

  There was little more than a half metre of floor on all sides. All that remained was a crumbling ledge skirting the walls, which creaked and shook as I followed Lu towards apartments 7 and 8. I shuffled along with my nose skimming the wall. Lu was more agile, springing to the first doorway in six strides. Something splintered under my feet and fell tinkling down through the building’s dark.

  ‘Steady,’ Lu said. ‘Just a few more steps. What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Falling. Dying.’

  ‘That won’t happen. You’re not on the list.’

  ‘I wasn’t on the last list. What about the next one?’

  She didn’t answer that, instead training her flashlight through the cave-like opening. There were rapid scuttling sounds somewhere inside.

  ‘The good news is, it still has a floor,’ Lu reported. ‘Otherwise it’s a hell of a mess.’

  As I caught her up, a shrill cry went up in the apartment across the hall and a blast of orange light filled its doorway. Framed against it, Becky’s silhouette pressed its hands to its ears. The flame brightened, then faded.

  ‘Ah, it wasn’t too bad,’ Becky called. ‘Mr October just took out two demons with one fireball. You should’ve seen it!’

  ‘Lucky shot,’ Mr October replied. ‘There are still three separated souls in here. Let’s get down to business.’

  Seconds later another, smaller white light flared inside Apartment 5, a sure sign that the first newly-departed was safely away.

  But we had work to do on our side too.

  ‘After you,’ said Lu.

  ‘That’s OK. After you.’

  ‘No, you.’

  Stepping inside Apartment 7, I was a bundle of nerves. I knew I couldn’t do what Mr October did. I’d tried a few times without success, and still had no idea how to throw a fireball. I couldn’t generate a spark. If whatever was inside this room came thundering at us, I’d have to find another way. I’d have to think fast.

  If the entrance to the apartment resembled a cave mouth, we were now in the cave that used to be someone’s home. Until an hour ago George Pride, 43, and his partner Philippa Moss, 38, had lived here blissfully unaware that the clock was ticking and their numbers were about to be called.

  Now it was a place of calamity, everything gone or in tatters and filled with the same cloying smoke as everywhere else. Outside the blown-out windows the brown haze surrounded the block like a cape, holding the darkness inside. Our lights travelled from wall to wall, then settled on a moving mass on the floor near a door on the right. That door was still intact.

  ‘Are we too late?’ Lu said. ‘What do you think?’

  I didn’t want to, but I had to look. George Pride’s body lay flat-out, done to a crisp. The movement and sounds came from the thing coiling itself around him – a Shifter in snake form, three times the size of George himself.

  It seemed to be growing even as we looked, swelling along its entire length. The demon’s scales were a shiny bottle green and its golden eyes had a sleepy, overfed look.

  Lu’s hiss was a match for the snake’s. ‘Quick. . . It’s trying to digest him.’

  His soul, she meant. ‘What can we do?’ I said.

  ‘It’s what you can do that counts. You need to stop it before it finishes, but hurry. He’s nearly gone.’

  The snake raised its head, baring long inward-curving fangs. The noise from its throat warned us not to interfere. The creature’s eyes didn’t flicker when another shout and another fireball sounded across the hall. Its hiss became a whisper, a chilling voice.

  ‘You can’t help this one, Ben Harvester. First come, first served.’

  Great, I thought. It knows my name too. They probably all did by now.

  The creature tightened its hold on George Pride and tilted back its head as if preparing to strike.

  ‘Now,’ Lu said. ‘Think, Ben, think.’

  ‘Think what?’

  ‘Like you thought about the Mawbreed that time.’

  I knew what Lu meant, but this was different. Every situation was different. Sometimes the pictures came easily to mind, sometimes they took ages or never came at all. This one was still piecing itself together when the snake erupted, too gorged to keep its gourmet dinner down, and showered the room with a spray of digestive juices.

  We spun around, hiding our faces.

  ‘Oh yuck,’ Lu said. ‘That’s gross.’

  The short silence that followed was broken by a roll of thunder and a bark of voices on an upstairs floor. The conflict was still raging up there, but the one in this apartment seemed to be at an end.

  There was another movement now among the snake’s steaming remains, George Pride’s newly-departed soul slowly picking its way out of the mess and standing upright. A burly man with singed grey hair matting his scalp, he wiped slime from his forehead and blinked into the flashlight beams, trying to recall who he was and what he’d seen.

  ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said at last, oblivious to the mess at his feet and looking anxiously at the door on his left. ‘Philippa. . .’ he murmured. ‘Oh God, Philippa was here too.’

  ‘Where?’ Lu said.

  ‘The bedroom. We were getting ready to go out for the day when it happened.’

  ‘I’ll check,’ Lu said. ‘Stay here please, George. Ben will look after you.’

  He gave me the once-over. ‘You’re just a kid. How can you know what to do?’

  ‘I have a good teacher,’ I said. ‘Will you step this way?’

  When I opened the door he went without question, not glancing back until the last second when an anxious look entered his eyes, an afterthought. He should have waited for Philippa. They should have gone together. But he couldn’t turn back now and I was glad when he continued on, feeling his way forward until the light covered him.

  It turned out to be a good thing that George went when he did, not knowing what I was about to find out. Closing the door on the rectangle of light, I turned to see Lu returning from the bedroom, shaking her head.

  ‘She’s gone,’ she said. ‘Her body’s still there – parts of it are. But the rest of her isn’t. They took her.’

  After that, we swept Apartment 8 to find no one home. It may have been unoccupied at the time of the blast but it was hard to tell from what remained. There were no departeds or demons inside, though, and we returned to the ledge to a thump-thump of Vigilant rifle fire high in the building. Mr October and Becky were waiting for us over by the stairwell.

  ‘How did it go?’ Mr October called.

  ‘Only one. And one got away.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘We scored five,’ Becky boasted, and then added more thoughtfully, ‘but there were three we didn’t get to in time.’

  We waited in the lobby for the others. Teams trooped down in twos and threes, some hobbling from injuries, others from sheer exhaustion. One Vigilant had been sliced at an angle, right collarbone to left hip, his uniform seeping dark red, but he’d live. All were present and otherwise correct.

  ‘Look,’ Kate Stone said suddenly, pointing outside.

  Rescue workers were moving away from the forecourt – not just moving away but legging it, yelling and waving each other on. Something was about to give.

  ‘Time to go,’ Mr October said.

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Move out!’

  ‘Not a successful salvage operation,’ Mr October said as Lu reversed at speed across the car park, gears shrieking. ‘Not by any stretch. We saved seventeen, but they took thirtee
n, including the bomber. Seven survivors in total.’

  ‘So the list was leaked,’ Becky said, eager to prove a point.

  ‘We don’t know that yet,’ Mr October said. ‘But soon we will.’

  Becky put on her belt and turned with me to watch the fragile black building in the fog while we drove away. I suppose we were waiting for it to fall, collapse in on itself like a burnt-out matchstick house. But it didn’t fall as long as we looked.

  10

  MISS WEBSTER

  t the end of that shift Mr October produced two T-shirts from the depths of his coat, one for each of us, black with white lettering.

  ‘A memento of today, a day you’ll never forget,’ he said.

  The logo on the T-shirts read: I SURVIVED BAD SATURDAY.

  We were given the next day off whether we liked it or not. Sundays could be as busy as any other day, but Mr October refused to let us back to the field so soon after our involvement in today’s traumatic events.

  ‘You’ve seen more in the last forty-eight hours than most junior agents do in a year and you need time to regroup,’ he said. ‘Sorry, that’s Ministry policy for all new recruits. You could twist my arm and come in for a little clerical work, but salvage ops are out of the question.’

  Becky didn’t care much for clerical work, preferring to be out there, hands on, helping where she could. In the end she decided to be with her parents in Hoxton, whereas I jumped at the chance to come in. The receipts office was my home from home.

  I spent late Sunday morning there with Sukie, testing her telepathic powers while the telegraph machine was quiet. Sukie had the desk. I stood with my back to the shuttered window, keeping my hands behind me where she couldn’t see.

  ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  Sukie didn’t look up. ‘Three.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Six,’ she said through a yawn.

  ‘Amazing. How do you do it?’

  ‘Dunno. I don’t even think about it.’ She ran a hand back through her black mane. ‘And that won’t fool me either.’