Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  Sofia actually looked a little abashed under my glare. “What did you do?” I wanted to know.

  “Made a mess,” she said evasively. “I figured Scott Towers was the sensible place to start looking for a missing Scott. Their internal security is impressive.”

  “But not, as it turns out, impenetrable,” Oscar said with a wan smile.

  “Once I had Oscar, we decided to find you,” Sofia explained. “Took a while to figure out where you were, seeing as you’d fallen off the grid. Lucky your vampire playmate had you bat-chipped. When he called me, he said he was searching but didn’t get a solid location on you until about a minute ago. Hooray for pain, eh?”

  “What’s he done? My father? It’s something terrible, isn’t it?” Oscar said. I realised this was why he looked so pale and sick. “That man from the museum. The other deaths that have been on the news…he’s involved somehow isn’t he?”

  And then some, I thought, but I didn’t know how to tell him, and there wasn’t time.

  “Where are the others?” Sofia asked me. “Why are you on your own fighting strange creatures in this place? Where is Kane?”

  I swallowed compulsively. “Kane…is dead, I think. Chase too. Cloves and Director Coldwater are holed up upstairs with Kane’s daughter, who’s in a seriously bad way. Oh, and as well as these fucking awful creatures here, this place is also swarming with Pale, so we need to get the fuck out of here now.”

  “What has my father done?” Oscar insisted. He looked close to tears. I pitied him a little.

  “He’s mad, Oscar,” I said softly. “He had those people killed. He made these…things, using science and ancient alchemy. He’s been experimenting on every type of GO he could lay his hands on out here. But it’s not what he’s done that matters, it’s what he’s going to do, in about ten minutes time. He’s created a virus, weaponised it. It targets GOs…all of them. Every GO will die.”

  The Bonewalker shifted slightly behind Oscar, its voluminous black robes rippling about it as though underwater. Its mask was emotionless of course, but its wet black eyes stared out at me. I hadn’t even considered them. They were GO too. Everyone was in the same boat, I guess.

  “We have to get back,” I said, limping toward Oscar and the creature. “This thing works for you now, right?” I pointed at the looming Bonewalker. “We need to get to your father, Oscar. Where is he now, do you know?”

  Oscar looked lost, his face grey in the shadows of the dark reception. “I’ve been isolated in my rooms since the museum,” he said. “My datapad, the main screens, phones, everything shut down. I haven’t spoken to the mad old bastard. He had some event or something tonight…I don’t remember.”

  I did. Suddenly, I understood exactly how Marlin Scott was going to fill the city with death.

  “Jesus, he’s at the Ashmolean,” I said.

  “The museum?” Sofia questioned.

  “At the party, when he was giving his spiel, he said there would be a celebration, tonight, on the rooftops. To congratulate himself on obtaining the Botanical Gardens site. There’s going to be a firework display.” I stared at the two of them. “Fireworks. That’s how he’s going to rain down death. The fireworks are rigged. Airborne virus.”

  “We need to go, now,” Sofia said. Her face was pale with the news of Kane’s death, but she seemed resolute.

  “No,” I said. “Just me and Oscar. He can’t stay here, it’s too dangerous. But I need you to help Coldwater and Cloves. They’re trapped up there, and there are still at least three Pale alive.” She glared at me.

  “You’re stronger than a human.” I took Oscar’s gun from him and passed it to the Tribal, who accepted it silently. “How many bullets are in here?” I asked.

  “A full clip,” Oscar said. “Minus the one I used to kill that freak thing there. At least twelve, I think.”

  I looked at Sofia, who glanced up the staircase and cocked the gun. “I’m a very good shot,” she said. “If Kane’s daughter is up there, I will get her, and your humans.”

  “Be careful. There are more of these hosts up there too. If they touch you, you’ll be dead. They’re full of this plague. And there are drones. Armed ones.”

  Sofia stepped slightly away from the bloodied corpse near our feet. She smiled grimly. “I do like a challenge. Be sure to send the Bonewalker back to pick us up. Preferably before I run out of bullets.”

  “I mean it,” I told the Tribal through gritted teeth. I was thinking of Kane and Chase. I didn’t want another person dead here. “Be careful, Sofia.”

  She nodded and turned for the stairs. I watched her disappear up into the darkness, wondering absently how surprised Cloves was going to be to see her coming to help. If she was still alive up there that is. I turned to face Oscar.

  “How does this…work?” I stared at the Bonewalker, still looming over us. I didn’t care if Oscar did insist that he had made a deal and recruited this particular one to do his bidding. The truth is, no one really understood what motivated a Bonewalker, or why they chose to obey people when asked. I still didn’t trust the thing.

  Oscar took my hand. “I just tell it where to take us. That’s how we got here.” He looked up at the looming spectre. “The Ashmolean,” he said. “To my father.”

  The blank white face peered down at us both intimidatingly.

  “Um…please?” Oscar added, a little less stridently.

  Blackness rushed out of everywhere and enveloped us, and we fell hand in hand through cold, empty darkness.

  41.

  In the lurching nothingness, my inner ear span with no point of reference. Floating through a blind senseless world of anti-gravity. My organs felt loose inside my body, all sense of direction gone. And then, out of nowhere, hard ground suddenly smacked into my outstretched hands and knees.

  The darkness was pulled aside as the Bonewalker lowered its arms, the fluttering curtain of its robe unveiling the world once more. Moments ago, we had been in the old power plant. Now, I saw, as I looked around, blinking and disoriented, we were in a well-lit restaurant. Diners stared at us in alarm, forks and glasses frozen in surprise halfway to open mouths. The soft refrain of classical music flowed over us all unobtrusively. It was Beethoven, I think. I’d never liked Beethoven.

  I struggled up off my knees, clinging to an equally woozy Oscar for balance. I stared around, trying to orient myself. We were in a sumptuous dining room, softly lit and peaceful. We’d appeared in the middle of a sea of tables. I was acutely aware that I was covered in plaster dust, dirt and dried blood. Thirty or forty startled diners stared at us.

  The Bonewalker glided backwards, as though trying to distance itself from our embarrassing state. Oscar gave it a curt nod, and it disappeared, winking out of existence with remarkably little fanfare, like a soap bubble popping, going back to the power plant, I hoped, to get Sofia and the others out of there. The air filled the vacuum it left behind with a soft ‘whup’.

  “Where are we?” I said, staring around, ignoring the startled stare of the diners. The soft and understated lamplight was remarkably bright to me. I’d gotten so used to the grey shadows of the power plant.

  “The Ashmolean,” Oscar said. “Rooftop restaurant. It’s above the museum. My father’s private party will be above us, outside on the roof.”

  One entire wall of the long dining room was glass, leading out to a wide rooftop patio which gave stunning views over the skyline of New Oxford. There were stairs out there that led upwards, onto the wide flat rooftops of the museum proper, where I knew Marlin Scott would be holding court with the Mankind Movement. I grabbed Oscar by the wrist and dragged him outside, weaving urgently between the tables and utterly ignoring the surprised-looking waiters who were moving ineffectually to intercept us.

  Every inch of me hurt as we flew out of the glass doors and onto the rooftops, making for the stairs. I felt like death. My throat was still burning where the faceless monstrosity had tried to choke the life out of me. I was going to have one
hell of an interesting bruise. Perhaps Cabal could shell out on matching chokers for Cloves and me. The wind was cold out here on the balcony. It felt glorious on my skin. Beyond the railings, Oxford’s lights glittered below us. Far off, elsewhere in the city, I knew police were trying to contain the outpouring of bad feeling between Tribals and humans, scuffles and looting, worse probably, over in poorer areas like the Slade. You wouldn’t know it here though, where the wealthy and lucky dined in peace to dulcet music, and the stately, well-lit stones of Oxford’s old quarter stood quiet and deceptively peaceful below us.

  I thought of Sofia, back at the power plant. Should I have left her there? In hell? She had come for me after all. She had brought the Bonewalker taxi. I decided to believe she’d be fine. Kane may have fallen to the Pale, but he’d been unarmed. Sofia had the gun. Was arming a Tribal overkill? Like strapping a chainsaw to the fin of a shark? I hoped so. She’d be able to take down the remaining Pale and any of those freaky hosts still scuttling around. I wanted them all dead. I shuddered to think what she’d do when she saw Kane’s body. Was Chase dead too? Would she be too late to help Cloves and Director Coldwater? As we ran up the exterior metal steps, racing for the roof above, the treads clanging underfoot, I stopped worrying about everyone else and instead fervently wished we had the gun ourselves.

  The upper roof, I saw, was a wide flat area, like a great dance floor of cordoned off decking, open to the sky. There was nothing above us. It was a clear night, and even through the light pollution of the city, the stars twinkled down coldly on the scene below. There were perhaps a hundred people here, gathered in well-heeled merriment, a crowd of private party invitees filling the large space. Decorative swathes of cloth and balloons were everywhere. It was a regular MM rally. Scott’s guests, many of whom were no doubt the same people I had mingled with at the masked ball, milled around us in the night. I wondered if any of them, even the most rabid Mankind Movement supporter, had any idea what Scott was planning to do. That he planned the deaths of countless beings tonight.

  We barrelled into the crowd rudely, pushing people aside as I searched the rooftops. At the far end of the amassed crowd was a long raised platform, a stage overseeing all. Elaborate fireworks were rigged and arranged on a scaffold behind this, a dramatic backdrop. A long bank of huge and impressive looking rockets, waiting to be shot into the sky. And in front of them, alone on the stage, leaning on a balloon and bunting swathed podium, holding court like a king over his subjects, was Marlin Scott himself.

  This was not the hologramatic Scott who had addressed us through the screen at the power plant, young and virile and remarkably like his son. Nor was it the techno-ghost Scott who had wowed us at the party, throwing lights into the roof space like a cheery wizard. This was the real Marlin Scott. Famous recluse, powerful industrialist, co-creator of the Pale who had ruined our world, and builder of the wall. Finally before me in the flesh. A stooped and elderly man, looking pale and desiccated in an expensive suit, as his liver-spotted hands gripped the podium for support. I had met him once, the previous year, and he had been old even then. But I was shocked at his deterioration. The man on the stage looked ancient, shrivelled and shrunk in on himself. Evidently whatever the source of his illness, it was eating him alive; a virulent and unforgiving cancer. He looked little more than a brittle walking corpse, his head obscenely bald and pale, oddly vulnerable.

  But his eyes, I saw, as we elbowed deeper into the crowd, they were the same. Scott had the bright harsh eyes of a zealot, of one who believed his own publicity. They were filled with arrogant, self-assured righteousness. He was halfway through a speech.

  “And so we gather here, to celebrate a coming victory,” he said, his cracking, quavering voice amplified through the speakers. It echoed at us from all directions. “As promised, the Botanical site will be ours, the plant will begin operation soon, and we will drive all monsters from the shadows of our streets.” He thumped the podium for emphasis with his weak, large-knuckled hand. “These recent murders…these unforgivable, animal attacks, right here on our doorstep, cannot be ignored. They wish to bring the fight to us, but they have signed their own death warrants. Cabal will have to act. The authorities cannot ignore the slaughter of human lives in Portmeadow any longer. Too long have we lived in fear from the vampires, from the Tribals, from the Bonewalkers. The monsters amongst us. We are stronger than they know. We will not cower. We will fight to protect our families, our children, and our way of life.”

  With a sweeping arm, he indicated the impressive wall of oversized fireworks looming behind him. “Tonight, we celebrate the light, and through this symbol, we will bring humanity back to the centre of our world.”

  I shoved aside a poor, blameless woman in a purple dress, spilling her champagne flute as we crushed our way through the crowd. At my side, Oscar elbowed a tuxedoed man staring up at the podium.

  “Stop!” he yelled. “Father! Stop this now!”

  Curious faces turned to us and a murmur ran through the crowd. Within seconds, curiosity had turned to shock at the sight of Scott the younger, darling Oscar, looking bedraggled and dragging with him a blood-splattered woman. A few gasps went up in the crowd. Ignoring the people around us, my eyes were fixed only on the stage ahead. I saw Marlin falter on the podium, the old man noting the loss of his rapt audience. His rheumy eyes roamed the crowd, looking for the source of the disturbance. I broke away from Oscar, releasing his wrist at last. It wasn’t Marlin Scott I wanted. What was I going to do? Judo chop him and make a citizen’s arrest? No, the mad old bastard wasn’t my primary target right now. My interest lay elsewhere. Diving through the crowd, and stepping on more than one set of startled toes, I made for the side of the platform, to where I could see a complicated cluster of wires. The mechanism for launching the fireworks. The computerised rig which would unwittingly launch death into the skies tonight.

  “Oscar?” I heard Marlin Scott say, clearly shocked to find his imprisoned son and heir free, when he should be safely locked away. The old man had paled even further, but he was still trying to recover control of the crowd, who stared between the two uncertainly. “How…what…what is the meaning…”

  “You can’t do this, dad!” Oscar yelled, still shoving people aside, making his way forward through the stunned onlookers. The crowd separated before him, so that Oscar seemed to move forward in an empty bubble of space. Silence, other than the rustle of chiffon and the occasional clink of a glass, surrounded him. “You can’t just kill them all. I won’t let you.”

  I glanced up as I snaked through the crowd, and I saw the look of incredulous surprise on Marlin Scott’s face slowly harden into anger. I had never seen such a look of undisguised rage on the old man’s face. I don’t believe Oscar had ever tried to stand up to him before. In fact, it had probably been a great many years since anyone had told Marlin Scott what he could and could not do. Psychotic old coot, he clearly didn’t like it.

  “You don’t understand,” the old man said, shaking his head, trying to reason with his son as he approached through the throng. “You’re confused, Oscar. You don’t know what I’m trying to achieve here. These…these…people…you associate with. They have poisoned your mind. Confused your thoughts…I will free us all.”

  “You’re a murderer,” Oscar said bitterly, spitting the word like a foul taste in his mouth. Murmurs and scandalous gasps ran through the crowd. “You killed those people. It wasn’t rabid Tribals. You made it look that way, but you’re full of shit, old man. You killed them in cold blood to stir up trouble. You may not have held the knife, but you gave the order. There’s blood on your hands. You tried to frame the Tribals, and to cover your own tracks. I won’t let you destroy them all. You think because you have money and power you get to decide who lives and dies?”

  The crowd were muttering amongst themselves. I don’t believe many of them had processed what Oscar was saying. The Scott brand was so strong in the mind of New Oxfordians, it was almost impossible to believe.
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  “They’re…monsters,” Marlin spat, ignoring the crowd now and addressing only his son. He was staring down as Oscar as though he was a stranger. “Monsters, you stupid boy. These things that you love.” He shook his old head in disgust.

  “No, you’re the monster,” Oscar said. He was shaking with betrayal, his hands clenched into tight fists at his side, knuckles white as he stared up at his father, raised above him on his pedestal and looking down over the boy like a god of judgement.

  My heart suddenly broke for Oscar. Even from where I stood, away in the crowd, I could see tears in the boy’s eyes. “You’ve controlled my entire life. It’s what you do. And you think you have the right to control everyone else’s.” Oscar addressed the crowd, his voice breaking. “This man, my…father…” He pointed in accusation. “The great and good Marlin Scott, saviour of the city, has killed and lied. And he means to do worse, tonight. I will have no part of it.”

  “Everything I’ve ever done was for you, you ungrateful brat!” Marlin yelled, no longer concerned with keeping calm in front of his guests. His anger had overcome any sense of saving face. Marlin Scott’s voice echoed through the speakers, crackling with feedback.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” Oscar shouted bitterly, now at the front of the crowd. “I know why you want them all dead. All your ‘monsters’. I know the real reason.”