by Jenna Grey
It was such a matter of fact statement. Polly felt her blood tingle.
Bert turned to her.
“Polly, I know this is going to be quite awful for you, but I think you need to come with us,” he said. “You are by far the best psychometrist, and you will be able to glean what we’re dealing with here far better than either Finn or I could. You are the one that has the strongest connection to all of this after all.” Bert might just as well have said, “Well you’re responsible for all of this so why shouldn’t you get your hands dirty.’
Finn stepped in front of Polly and pushed her further back behind him.
“No way. we are not putting Polly through that,” Finn said. “You know what happens when she touches anything with any kind of history. No way is she going near that slaughterhouse.”
Polly moved back around him and gave him a pointed look.
“That’s for me to decide, not you, Finn. I’ll be fine. Bert’s right. I am the best psychometrist here, and I want to help – I need to help.”
Blaine gave her a lopsided smile.
“You’re a brave lassie. If you’re sure you can handle it, best we get going.”
Polly swallowed and tried not to let them see just how terrified she was.
“I just need to get my bag, I won’t be a second,” Polly said, as she made for the stairs.
Just as she’d thought, Liam was squatting at the top, eavesdropping, and she didn’t need to be a thought reader to see what was going through his mind. He grabbed her by the top of her arms as she passed and dragged her into his room, shutting the door.
“Polly, you can’t do this. You know what’s going to happen. You’re going to feel every single second of what those poor buggers went through at the end.”
Polly pulled herself free and gave him her most ferocious look.
“What? You think it’s going to be worse than me feeling Sigurd Thorgeirsson’s death?” she asked in a hissed whisper. She had felt every single second of that excruciating death; her skin stripped from her back, her rib cage smashed open, and her lungs ripped out from behind while she still lived. The Blood Eagle. Nothing could be worse than that.
Liam rolled his eyes.
“That’s got nothing to do with anything... why put yourself through this? Let them deal with it.”
There was a look of such hurt on his face, such fear.
“Liam, this is my battle more than anyone else’s,” she said, not angry now, just tired. “It’s me that Hel wants, and me that needs to take responsibility for it.”
Liam gave a low growl in his throat, and she could see that he was furious with her.
“What are you trying to prove? We know you’re tough’ you don’t have to throw yourself into a pit of snakes to prove it.”
Polly slipped her hand into his and gave him a barely-there smile.
“I need to do this. I can’t just sit around letting other people fight my battles for me. I’ll be fine.”
Liam said nothing for a moment, and then without any warning, grabbed her and kissed her hard. It was a violent kiss, angry, and it shocked her into letting him take it. His mouth ate at hers, and that kiss seemed to go on for hours. He finally pulled away.
“If anything happened to you, I couldn’t bear it,” he said. Polly just stared at him for some moments, so taken aback by what had just happened that she couldn’t focus on anything but that kiss. She felt her cheeks burning scarlet, and in the end, she was forced to look away.
“Something bad is going to happen to all of us if we don’t stop that bitch,” Polly replied, but she could barely get the words out. That kiss was all that filled her head. Liam put his hand to her face and caressed her flaming cheeks, tipping his head forward and bumping foreheads with her.
“Just remember that you’re precious to all of us.”
Polly nodded absently and rushed to her bedroom to grab her bag, pushing her way back past him without looking at him. She could feel his eyes burning into her back as she hurtled down the stairs almost knocking Bert over when she reached the bottom.
Blaine raised an eyebrow.
“Slow down there, Lassie, you’ll break something.”
Polly’s heart was beating so hard she thought it was going to explode out of her chest like a scene from Alien. She mumbled something inane by way of excuse under her breath and followed them out into the shop.
“We can take my car,” Blaine said, eyeing up Bert’s 1979 Volvo with some bemusement; it was built like a tank, a great grey behemoth, that could have taken down a solid brick wall and not felt it. “I’m not sure that monster would get us there.”
Polly was still only half with them, her mind in turmoil. It was just a kiss, just because he was afraid for her and wanted to show her that he cared. Why was it then that she couldn’t get it out of her head? Finn looked across at her and gave her a half-hearted smile, and she smiled back, but she was sure that he could see that she was hiding a secret behind that smile.
Blaine’s car was parked around the corner, a glorious tribute to modern technology and probably costing more than most people’s annual salary. Bert rode shotgun, and Finn and Polly sat in the back, Finn giving Polly anxious looks and clutching her hand tightly.
Blaine pulled away, flooring the accelerator and sending Polly slamming back in her seat before she could get her seat belt on. He screeched off, hitting 50 miles an hour before they’d gone more than a few yards. Polly’s stomach was churning, and by the time they’d gone a few blocks, she was ready to throw up.
And Central London was forty-two miles away.
CHAPTER TEN
The car pulled up with a sudden lurch and Polly was thrown forwards and then back into her seat, adding a few more bruises to the ones that already covered her body from top to toe.
The police seemed to have cordoned off the entire area, and the streets around were swarming with police, fire, ambulance and sundry other vehicles strategically placed around the place to keep away anyone that wasn’t them. As usual, there was a vast multitude of ghouls hoping to catch sight of the bodies as they were brought out. Polly would have given anything not to be catching sight of them, but she had to do this, whatever the cost. The police were keeping the crowd on the right side of the tape, but they were struggling to cope with the numbers trying to get through. The press and media teams were pressing forwards, a seething mass of news-hungry vultures assaulting anyone who looked official, trying to get a statement and it was obvious that the police were getting close to breaking point by the constant bludgeoning. This was such a bizarre news story that there was bound to be blanket media coverage worldwide.
“Stay here, I’ll get the police to give you an escort through the crowd,” Blaine said, forcing the car door open by physically pushing the crowd out of the way and barely managing to squeeze through the gap. “Lock the doors,” he ordered, as he slammed the door.
Blaine eventually pushed his way back through the crowds with some uniformed officers who bulldozed their way through and forced the crowds back so that they could get to the entrance stairs. It came up straight onto the street, just an old cast iron paling surrounding it. It looked more like the entrance to a public lavatory than a busy underground station.
“Is that it?” Polly asked.
“Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” Bert said, looking down the steps into the narrow entrance.
“I told them you were animal experts. Not sure they believed me, but they couldn’t be bothered to argue with me,” Blaine said. “It’s a bit of a walk to the platform – there are a lot of passages linking the different train lines and platforms here. That’s probably no bad thing under the circumstances. They’re acting as a buffer between whatever’s down there and the outside world.”
“Let’s do this,” Finn said, following Blaine down into the darkness.
Once down into the passages, a sudden stillness seemed to descend on them, and it was eerie. All they could hear was the tapping of their feet
on the stone floor, and the echo bouncing from the walls.
“There are a lot of passages,” Polly said, moving just a little closer to Finn. “It feels as if we’re walking into a tomb.”
Here and there someone passed them: a group of people in forensics gear, a police officer, and other official personnel. The closer they got to what must have been the scene of the incident the more there were, until eventually, they found themselves in the atrium at the top of the escalator amongst a crowd of people. The lights, although not that bright, suddenly filled every corner of Polly’s vision, pounding into her head, the sounds a chaos in her head. She stumbled a little, grabbing hold of Finn’s arm.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” Finn said. “Are you okay, Polly?”
Polly wasn’t sure that she was. Too much noise, too many people, too many lights and too much movement; she was beginning to suffer severe sensory overload.
“No, I’ll be all right. I just need to focus.”
It was easier said than done because she felt as if her brain was boiling. She pressed close to Finn and buried her face against his shoulder, trying to shut out the sights and sounds around her that were threatening to overwhelm her. She forced herself to look up, focusing on just a small group of people near the top of the escalators. They all stood around with shock and fear etched on their faces; it was harrowing to see people that had been trained to deal with the worst kind of attacks and disasters so afraid and traumatised.
“I warn you, it’s fucking horrendous down there,” one of them said, as if his face hadn’t already told them that. He was a young police officer, and he looked as if he’d been on duty for far too long, his face a little stubbled, his skin waxy and eyes glazed. That could have been shock, Polly supposed.
He looked enquiringly at Polly, Finn and Bert, taking them in from head to toe as if he wasn’t quite sure what species they were and was looking for an identification label of some kind.
“They’re animal behaviourists,” Blaine said. There was a slightly bewildered nod of acceptance. “I take it that whatever did this is long gone?”
“Looks like it,” he said, wiping his arm across his face. “One survivor said that they saw a huge dog run into the tunnel, but we think that he must have been in shock because he said that it was the size of a horse.”
“Irish Wolfhound maybe,” Blaine said. “Some of those bastards can be enormous. It’s possible that some wolves have escaped from some private zoo, if not. People keep all sorts these days without thinking of what would happen if they escape.”
Polly marvelled at Blaine’s ability to bullshit with such confidence.
“Are there many survivors?” Bert asked.
The man, who was already pale, lost what little colour he had left. Polly noticed that his white shirt was very bloody at the wrist. She had to look away.
“A lot more dead, and a good many of the survivors are going to wish they had died. Some of the injuries are horrific. Poor bastards,” the man replied. “They’re taking them out through one of the other entrances. They’re having trouble finding enough hospital beds. The army has set up emergency operating theatres in tents out back because a lot of them wouldn’t make it to the hospital. It’s a nightmare, just a bloody nightmare.”
“So what’s the state of play down there at the moment?” Blaine asked.
“There’s a train stuck in the tunnel between here and St Pauls; we just know the dogs are still in there – I think they’re going to send armed police in. Nobody really knows what’s going on, just that they’re dealing with a pack of wild dogs. The CCTV cameras are all fried, no-one is quite sure why.” Blaine nodded his thanks and turned to Bert.
“Best get down there and see what’s going on,” Blaine said, moving towards the escalator.
“Good luck to yer mate. I wouldn’t go back down there for a year’s salary.”
Polly felt a sudden wave of nausea sweep over her. The thought of going down those steps into whatever madness lay below was overwhelming. She realised that she was breathing hard, and her heart felt as if it was trying to break the four-minute mile, but as hard as she tried she couldn’t calm herself. This was pathetic; she had to woman up to this and stop being such a wuss. Polly waited for Bert and Finn to go first, bracing herself. She finally plucked up the courage to take the first step. Finn snatched at her hand.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, for about the tenth time.
Polly didn’t bother to answer, but pushed a little ahead of him and began walking down the stationary escalator.
“Emergency lights. They’ve cut off the main power supply,” Blaine said. “They can’t have power running into the tunnels, if they’re sending people in. If they send the police in there, there are going to be even more casualties.”
“Can you hold them off for a bit? You must have some authority to delay them at least,” Finn said. “To give us a chance to find out what we’re dealing with.”
“Maybe. I can maybe pull rank on this. I don’t know.” His expression didn’t give Polly a whole lot of confidence.
They had reached the bottom of the escalator now, and there was a strange smell in the air, a mixture of something like oil and raw hamburger, almost overpowering in its intensity. There was the taste of copper in Polly’s mouth, and she felt giddy as the stench hit her.
The first thing she saw as she approached the opening onto the platform were bloody skid marks on the floor, as if a child had paddled in red paint and then slid the whole length of the room, leaving a trail mark across it. It was drying now to a viscous dark red. There were more bloody footprints heading towards the escalator, and large patches of dried blood in several places; sawdust had been sprinkled over the top to stop people slipping on them.
They were accosted by what must have been a member of the underground staff, dressed in blue coveralls, which were badly stained with blood around the bottom of the trousers. He must have been paddling in it. It wasn’t really surprising that he challenged them. Blaine flashed his badge.
“These are specialists, here to help us work out what the hell did this.”
The man gave them the same look they had received from the policeman, irritated bewilderment.
“Yer don’t need a bloody animal specialist to work out what did this – you can hear the fuckers in the tunnel, they’re still there.”
Polly listened, and from somewhere in the distance she could hear screams and cries for help, and between their screams, the sound of something snarling, a sound that made her blood freeze in her veins. The man wandered back up towards the escalator, a weary shuffle, mumbling under his breath about their being ‘a lot of fucking good’.
“We have to do something, Dad. We need to get in there and stop those things while there’s still someone alive in there,” Finn said.
“Wait here. I need to go in there and try and find out what’s going on. Just try not to look too conspicuous,” Blaine said, heading towards the platform entrance.
Bert gave a winter cold smile.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that Jack, if we don’t want to be seen, then nobody will see us.”
Jack nodded his understanding and managed a grimaced smile over his shoulder.
“I’ll be as quick as I can.”
They watched Jack disappear through the entrance and Bert moved her and Finn across the atrium to a small alcove at the side. People were milling backwards and forwards, but not one of them cast a glance in their direction or asked them what they were doing there. She wondered if Bert had somehow made them invisible; she would believe anything was possible where he was concerned.
“I daren’t even imagine what’s through there,” Finn said, looking towards the entrance.
“My best guess is that we’re dealing with hellhounds, demon hounds of some kind at least,” Bert said. “That is more worrying than might appear at face value. Hellhounds we can deal with, but if they have come from Helheim, come out into this world,
then it means that the path between the two realities is well and truly open and anything could be coming through. There are far worse things in that place than these creatures.”
“This is all my fault, isn’t it?” Polly said. “Hel is doing this to try and force me to give in to her. She thinks that if enough people die, if she can make me feel guilty enough about their deaths, then I’ll give in and let her take me.”
“Now, now, enough of that,” Bert said, kindly. “You know very well that you can’t give in to her because if she is let loose on this world, then it will be far, far worse. We cannot give in to her. We can never give in to her.”
Polly never had a chance to reply because Jack came back at that moment, ashen-faced and looking as if he’d already brought up his breakfast somewhere between here and there. He was carrying an armful of blue overalls.
“Here, put these on. You’re now on the cleanup squad. There are masks and caps in the pocket - you’ll need them, trust me. It was the best way to get you in there. Just try and look as if you belong here.”
“I’m not sure that anyone belongs here, Jack,” Bert said, taking the overall and pulling it on. Polly’s was about ten sizes too big for her. She had to roll up the trouser legs and cuffs a good half a dozen turns. The cap and mask were made of paper, the kind that surgeons wear, and she was more than grateful for them. Already the stench of death was clinging to them, and they hadn’t even got to the worst of it yet.
“They’re about to send the TRG in,” Blaine said. “We need to decide how we’re going to deal with this fast.”
“The what?” Finn asked.
“Tactical response group. It’s a specially trained task force of armed police. They still believe that they’re dealing with a pack of ordinary dogs in there, although how the fuck anyone could still believe that after what they’ve seen I don’t know. They’re expecting to go in there and shoot them. I tried to get them to hold off to give me time to call the Home Secretary or the PM and get the authority to overrule them, but I couldn’t get through. I’ll keep trying.”
