Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

“Early baroque actually,” I corrected, passing him the manila file as I opened the door. The air was cold on my skin. I was still a little shaky from the car bomb, but I didn’t want Griff to know that, so I passed off my jitters as shivers and wrapped my white parka tighter around me. “It’s the Danby gateway. One of the earliest structures in Oxford to use the classical style,” I told him as he climbed out after me.

  “It looks ancient,” my lab assistant agreed, following me out of the car. Our driver made no move to follow us. I guess the anti-terrorism escort ended here at the border.

  “It’s old alright,” I nodded. “Older than the porch at St Mary the Virgin’s church. Which was designed by the same man, just in case you were wondering.” The driver had wound his window up tightly and left the engine running. “Nicholas Stone. A man ahead of his time. Do you know he brought the baroque style to England more than half a century before it became popular here? I mean it was only ever fleetingly popular anyway, but you have to admit, it’s pretty bloody lush.” The archway loomed over us brooding and stately, inviting my admiration. “See? Here, Stone ignored the new simple classical Palladian style which was all the rage at the time. It had just been introduced to England from Italy by Inigo Jones, whom I’m sure you’ve heard of, but Stone wasn’t interested in what everyone else was doing. Instead he drew his inspiration from an illustration in Serlio’s book of archways.”

  Griff looked at me blankly, his hands thrust into his jeans pockets against the chill. “I have a copy at home,” I said lamely. I glanced at Griff, and gathered from his look that he didn’t share my passion for the city’s history. Griff’s only concession to the past was his vintage Kia Picanto car.

  “The architect was better known for some of the most Avant Garde tombstones of the day,” I said in a chipper voice, giving him a big reassuring smile. Never before had a grown man looked so like a sacrificial lamb. I was already regretting allowing him to accompany me.

  “Let’s hope this isn’t ours then,” Griff muttered. “Looks like the Tribals fortified it a bit since they set up home.” He nodded at the heavy chain-link fence which spanned the three arches. The tops of the pediments were also covered in razor wire. Everything about the entrance screamed ‘go away’.

  “The Tribals didn’t do that,” I said flatly. “We did.”

  “Ah. So why is it the ‘Danby’ gateway?” Griff asked, earning boy scout points for at least feigning interest.

  “We call it the Crescent Gate,” a woman’s voice interrupted, low and clear.

  Griff jumped. I stared into the gloom. The day was overcast, but the shadows within the archway seemed unnaturally dark to me, as though the gardens beyond were in permanent twilight. A woman stood before us, leaning on the inside curve of the entrance, arms folded, practically lounging. She had been so still we hadn’t spotted her at all.

  “Three gates like this one lead into our land: Hunters Gate, Crescent Gate and Harvest Gate,” she continued, stepping forward. She was dressed casually, tight jeans and a loose shirt, brown boots. Her angular face was framed with long straight red hair, rolling down her back unbound in a crimson curtain. She looked around my age, a little older maybe, and she was sneering at us, nose wrinkled, lips in a permanent pout. “We took this place for ourselves, so you are wrong, lady. Its name is Crescent Gate, and it belongs to us.” The woman’s accent was thick. Russian? Slovak? I couldn’t pin it down. Eastern Europe was in there somewhere though. With the pout and the narrowed glare through her dark eye makeup, she seemed like a sultry KGB agent, albeit one dressed like a butch lumberjack.

  Her eyes flashed as she moved from the shadow of the archway into daylight. The same way a cat or dog’s eyes will reflect in car headlights, momentary mirrors of gold.

  She was Tribal.

  If the spooky animal eyes didn’t give it away, her GO status was obvious from the way she moved. Humans are clumsy, hesitant; we are always a little too self-aware, even the most graceful of us. This woman moved like a jungle cat, she practically flowed across the pavement, stalking over to us. Her golden eyes flickered unnervingly again as she inspected us both. Her expression was the very definition of underwhelmed.

  “I am Sofia,” she announced, stopping a few steps in front of us, crossing her arms. She tilted her head to one side questioningly, chin thrust out in a challenging manner.

  “Doctor Phoebe Harkness,” I said, smiling my best goodwill smile. I was in no mood for dealing with attitude after my morning so far. “And this is my assis…”

  “You reek,” the woman said bluntly, her nose wrinkling.

  “I’m sorry?” I felt my smile tighten and freeze on my face.

  “You reek of gasoline and smoke,” Sofia said, blinking at me slowly.

  “Yes,” I said, understanding. “I was in an accident, a car bomb. Most inconvenient. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  She sniffed.

  “But I’m fine, as you can see.”

  “Most unfortunate,” she replied, sounding as though she couldn’t care less. Before I had time to wonder whether she meant the car bomb itself or my surviving it was unfortunate, she turned on her heel sharply and walked away, back into the shadows of the gateway. Without looking back, she flicked a hand over her shoulder at us, beckoning us to follow.

  Charming, I thought. I exchanged wary glances with Griff, and followed.

  The source of the gloom in the gardens soon became apparent. A maze, woven in dense foliage, continued from the archway. Sinister thorned tunnels blotted out the sky completely, twisting and turning until I was well and truly lost. They would have made Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother weep with envy.

  “Why do you think your alpha agreed to this meeting? Curiosity to meet the humans who live all around him maybe?” I managed to talk normally despite my gasping breath. She was going a fair clip, making no concessions for the puny mortals.

  Sofia snorted. “Who could be curious about your kind?” she quipped. “Kane has his own people to concern himself with. He has no interest in yours.” She stopped suddenly, so that I almost walked into the back of her. She glanced disparagingly over her shoulder at me, one hand reaching out in front of her to grip the snarled branches ahead. “Except, that is, when you become a problem to us.”

  “A problem?” I asked, meeting her narrowed, fierce eyes, and making sure I had my warmest and friendliest smile in place. This wasn’t easy. Hostility was rolling off the woman and for my part, I wasn’t yet convinced that the Tribals hadn’t tried to kill me a couple of hours ago. Why Cloves and Coldwater thought I would be a good ambassador, I have no idea. I was being provoked, I know, but it was taking every inch of my willpower not to respond to the aggression in kind.

  “You want what’s ours,” she said, clipping each word as though explaining a concept to an idiot child. “We have always owned the wild. And your kind have always wanted to tame it. It’s what you do, it’s your nature to claim and ruin. Trouble is, Doctor Phoebe Harkness, the world fell apart thanks to your people and their tinkering. Now the wild is too wild even for us. Out there belongs to those monsters you made. So here we live, locked in these cities with…” She rolled her eyes scornfully over myself and Griff. “…humans.”

  “We’re all neighbours now, that’s for sure,” I said.

  “We make what wild we can now, here in the city walls, and we do not trouble you, neighbour. But now you want what is ours again. Kane considers this a problem. For all of us. This is his land.”

  Debatable, I thought. And somebody has certainly been troubling the good gentle folk of Oxford. I didn’t say any of this out loud, but the way Sofia the unfriendly warrior princess was eyeballing me, I swear she could read my mind.

  She shook the branches with her hand, and a second later, they slid aside with a rustle. Two men, large and of the intimidating bodyguard mould, eyed us all with deep unfriendliness. They looked like drug runners, all bandanas and vest tops. I wondered if it was a conscious decision. I mean, vest tops in thi
s weather. I don’t care how hardcore tough you are, it’s just silly.

  “These are the humans Kane is expecting,” Sofia told them. “Come to parley for Cabal.”

  We were admitted beyond and the Botanical Gardens were laid out before us. By all accounts, Griff and I were two of the few humans to lay eyes on its interior in the last thirty years. It was the oldest in Britannia, before the wars. The most compact yet diverse collection of plants in the world gathered together in simplistic and artistic order and grace.

  Or it had been once.

  The strange twilight which seemed to be hanging over the city today was deeper in here. The gardens had run wild. The Tribals had made it very much their own. A small city of tents, mobile homes and trailers, both sleek modern chrome affairs and ancient looking Romany carts had filled the former gardens. It looked like a gypsy camp, or an army settlement. There were Tribals everywhere, sitting in groups outside their homes, or gathered around large fire-pits which had been dug into the former planting beds with little or no regard to historical preservation. The smell of cooking was everywhere, the sound of people talking low amongst themselves through tarpaulin walls, and children playing, as Sofia, our charmless guide, led us through the settlement.

  Everyone we saw as we passed through their makeshift town glared at us with expressions ranging from open hostility to guarded suspicion. I felt like a baby chicken who had stumbled accidentally into a den of foxes. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as we made our way deeper into the encampment, along winding dirt roads between the tents and trailers, across market-like squares where groups of Tribals, both male and female, stopped whatever they were doing to watch us pass in silence like pariahs. I resisted the childish urge to hold Griff’s hand for support. Sofia was walking fast, her tumble of red hair swishing on her back as she stalked ahead without once looking back to check if we were following. I hurried to keep up. I really didn’t want to lose my bearings in this place. I’d read my fairy tales and I knew what happened to little girls when they wondered off the forest path and got lost. Wolves and worse.

  Griff was getting glares and looks of either disdain or disinterest, but as for myself, more than once I caught a hungry leer aimed in my direction from a male Tribal or two. I’m certain they were calculated to intimidate me, the silly human girl walking amongst the beasts. It almost worked, except that I’d never seen anyone actually leer in real life, and it looked pretty funny.

  We passed through the majority of the tents and public spaces, the sounds of Oxford city far behind us now. We could have been anywhere in the wild for all I could tell. But then again, I’d never actually been in the wild before. This was the biggest open, non-urban space I’d ever been in. To think, people could once walk freely in these immense vastnesses, all over the world. My heart ached a little.

  We entered the old walled garden, surrounded by the original seventeenth century stonework. It was home to the oldest tree in the gardens, an English yew. If the Tribals hadn’t cut it down long ago for firewood or building materials that is.

  When the Earl of Danby had first contributed the funds for the Botanical back in 1621, he had wanted to set up a physical garden ‘for the glorification of God and the furtherance of learning’. I doubt he would ever have imagined it would end up as a sanctuary for a non-human race. It was their home now, and it didn’t seem particularly godly to me.

  Part of the land we walked on had originally been a Jewish cemetery, until the Jews had been expelled from Oxford, and everywhere else in England, back in the thirteenth century. And now the Tribals were facing expulsion too. Round and round we go…. Maybe the land was cursed.

  “We are here,” Sofia told us. “Kane will meet with you inside.”

  We had reached the largest of the garden’s famous glasshouses. There were several, or there used to be. This one was towering. All glass panes and wooden framing. There were lights on inside. It looked oddly sinister, the shadows of the trees and foliage within casting weird shapes on the window panes. I almost wished I could stay out here, in the man-made wilderness of the gardens.

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep,” I muttered absently to myself, trying to remember who said that.

  I didn’t expect anyone to hear me. I had been thinking aloud, trying to ignore the many hostile eyes boring into my back, but I had forgotten how keen Tribal ears were. Sofia gave me an odd, calculating look, her eyes narrowed. “And miles to go before you sleep, yes?” she said. “Robert Frost.” I must have looked more taken aback than I meant to, as her lip curled.

  “Surprised, Doctor? she said. “You think you are the only people who read? We should perhaps fetch sticks for you and be content?” She snorted in derision before I could reply, and turning away, pushed her way in through the doors.

  We were ushered inside. The glasshouse was hot and steamy, even with the turn of the seasons outside. The roof vaulted above us, a huge space, and every inch within was filled with trees and plants of every description. Once, no doubt, there would have been some semblance of order, careful pathways designed to lead visitors through the greenery, areas of the interior devoted to tropical plants, alpine plants, and everything between. The Tribals had let nature reclaim the space, and it had run rampant. Vines crisscrossed the pathways, creepers hung down between broad-leafed trees which had grown so tall they scraped the distant ceiling. The glass walls and roof must once have sparkled. Now they were opaque with steam and moss creeping in the corners of each pane, forging a latticework of vegetation through which the pale sun outside only managed to filter in thin, weak beams. In a way, I found it beautiful. Nature in its raw, ungoverned form.

  Sofia led us onwards, stepping surefooted and confidently over trailing branches and vines which threatened to trip myself and Griff with every step. There were other Tribals here. I could glimpse them occasionally in the foliage, but they were keeping back. Perhaps wary of us, more likely just wanting nothing to do with the two interloping humans.

  At the very centre of the glasshouse was a circular open space. It looked as though a fountain may once have stood here, but it was gone now. In its place was an odd assortment of furniture, an old battered desk, a couple of oxblood leather studded chairs which looked as though they might have been liberated from the universities long ago, and most incongruously, an ancient-looking gramophone sitting atop a weather-beaten filing cabinet. It looked like an office, only without walls.

  Scratchy music issued from the wobbly, spinning vinyl beneath the ornate needle. Classical. It soared up into the air and glass above us, and away into the darkness of the greenery on all sides, haunting and distant.

  Sitting by the gramophone was the largest man I had ever seen. Kane, alpha of the Tribals. From the photographs I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting. Perhaps to find him sitting on a throne of skulls drinking blood from a large goblet, but certainly not like this, crowded into a creaking chair listening to gramophone music and reading a battered old paperback. His angular face was not as broad as the shadowy pictures had suggested. His features were alarmingly large, but strangely long. Like a wolf muzzle, my helpful inner voice supplied. He wasn’t bad looking, in a hostile, predatory kind of way. He was wearing small gold rimmed spectacles and looked up as we approached.

  “The ambassador for Cabal,” Sofia announced. She still sounded to me as though she had an awfully big chip on her shoulder, but I couldn’t help notice a change in her posture. She approached the seated Kane sidelong, her eyes averted and head tilted respectfully downward, a clear sign of animal submission.

  It was odd witnessing Tribals in the flesh. The way they moved and spoke…I hadn’t yet decided if they were people who moved and looked like animals, or animals who mimicked humans.

  “Thank you, Sofia,” Kane’s voice was very low and soft and incredibly deep. I seemed to feel it in my stomach rather than hear it in my ears. Kane’s eyes passed over us as he set down his book on the desk and with h
is other hand removed his small glasses. His eyes were yellow, a deep rich amber which, like the others, caught the light, flashing like cats-eyes on a road.

  Perhaps it was my own prejudiced preconceptions, but I had expected him to look a lot more, well…grizzled. Bearded, wearing leather or battered suede and fur. Weren’t werewolves always hairy? Or was that just in the movies?

  But Kane was almost clean shaven, only a light fuzz of brown stubble dusting his chin. He was wearing dark pants and what looked to be a black cashmere sweater.

  He did have a long scar on his face from brow to cheek, however, which seemed suitably werewolf-y. Seems old lions always carry the most scars.

  “Welcome to my little corner of the world,” he said. “Or what remains of the world at least. Please, come, sit.” His deep voice was heavily accented like our reluctant escort’s. I wondered if they were related. I suppose all of the pack were, to some degree.

  I approached, Griff right by my side like some odd and woefully inadequate bodyguard. I could feel Griff’s tension, and knew that the Tribals would be able to also. I wished he would relax a little. I’m not sure what he was expecting. He was tightly wound as though ready to leap into action. If Kane decided to turn unpleasant, there was nothing we could have done about it. This mountain of a man could snap both our spines with one hand. He didn’t appear hostile though, not yet at least.

  There was only one other chair. I eased into it, the old leather creaking. Griff leaned against the desk behind me. I stole a quick look at the paperback. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It looked well thumbed. I also noticed that the small golden spectacles had no glass. Theatrical Tribals, hmm?

  “I very rarely entertain outside of the pack,” Kane rumbled, his words slow and measured. “I would offer you refreshments, but I think what we have to offer, you would find a little unpalatable, and perhaps too rare for your tastes.”

  Sofia had positioned herself at his side, head still bowed in deference, but I saw the corner of her mouth turn up in a sneering smile. I was beginning to deeply dislike her.