Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  Marlin Scott leaned back, still gripping the podium, his jaw working tightly, his knuckles white as he stared down at his only son.

  “It’s not that you want to save humanity,” Oscar sneered. “It’s not even anything as complicated as that you’re prejudiced.” His mouth turned down in bitterness. “You’re fooling even yourself, dad. Make yourself the hero of mankind, or the scourge of the GOs…whatever makes you feel better. But you’re not on a quest to rescue the city or anyone but yourself. You’ve never had a single thought in your life that didn’t revolve around yourself. You’re scared. That’s why you’re doing this.”

  “Be…quiet!” Marlin hissed, his eyes had narrowed. He glared down as Oscar, his expression like a cornered animal, a dangerous one.

  Oscar shook his head. “You’re scared for your own life. Dress it up and hide behind anything else you want, but that’s all it is. We both know you’re dying, dad. Look at you. You think you can cheat your way to salvation. Buy your way out. That this…plan…of yours will somehow absolve you?” He laughed bitterly. “You’ve always thought you can get anything you wanted. That the rules don’t apply to you. Well, this rule does. There’s no worming your way out of this one, old man. When you die, you’re not taking them all with you.” Oscar’s jaw clenched, tears ran down his cheeks. “You built the wall. You made your bargains.”

  Marlin left the podium, his hands shaking slightly. He had abandoned Oscar’s verbal assault, abandoned his guests. Like a retreating general, he turned his back on his son and he began to walk unsteadily along the platform, hobbling toward the fireworks.

  “Tell your guests, Dad,” Oscar shouted after him. “Tell them all, these idiots who worship the ground you walk on. Why the Bonewalkers work for you.” Oscar laughed bitterly. “Why they work for anyone.” He clambered up onto the stage, heaving himself out of the crowd and onto the platform

  I didn’t know what Oscar was talking about, if he was just trying to stall his father, but he had the crowd’s full attention. They were rapt and silent in the face of this spectacle. Of the younger Scott berating and attacking his old man. It could only work to my advantage to have everyone’s attention elsewhere. I had fought my way sideways through the crowd and was within arm’s reach of the cluster of wires. I stared up at the bank of large, elaborate fireworks. Knowing they were loaded with airborne plague.

  As is often the case in times of great stress, my brain decided to flashback to when Lucy and Griff had told me about the rats infected with the Pale virus that had been exposed to the host back in the lab. How they had all died in seconds, bleeding out from eyes and ears and mouth. A biblical death of rodent proportions. My hands shook a little as I reached up for the control bank. If I messed this up, if I set them off by accident, I’d be covering our city in a blanket of blood and death. There would be nowhere to hide, not for any GO.

  The death of entire species. Cabal would most likely take my GO ambassador badge away from me for that. I found myself wishing fervently that Allesandro and I hadn’t parted so awkwardly on top of the wall. If I just could have spoken to him…

  A hand suddenly grabbed my arm firmly, knocking me out of my thoughts. Startled, I had been apprehended by a suited security guard. One of Marlin Scott’s personal bodyguards no doubt. He surrounded himself with his own personal heavies, and they were never more than a few steps from him. Dark suited and humourless private security. I tried to shake him off, but the large, stony faced man clung on tightly, trying to tip me off balance, determined to stop my sabotage. Great, this was all I needed, some Johnny-muscles-for-hire dooming the world because he thought I was some GO rights activist saboteur.

  “The Bonewalkers…and others. You’ve used GOs,” Oscar spat from the stage. “All your life, when it was convenient, just like you use everyone. And now you’re old. You’re dying, and it’s time to pay the piper, right?” Oscar was stalking along the stage towards his retreating father. No one stopped him. I saw two other of Marlin’s own security force nearby, twins to the dumbass currently twisting my arm down here, but neither of them seemed to know what to do. Oscar was off limits, surely? He was a Scott after all. They could hardly grapple him to the ground.

  “What do you owe?” Oscar demanded. Marlin was headed for the fireworks. There was a bank of switches, I saw, up there on the stage with him. The ceremonial launch. He was determined to fulfil his plan, no matter what, I realised. The demented old bastard. Fuck and double fuck.

  “Answer me!” Oscar spat.

  Marlin Scott was ignoring Oscar. I glimpsed his face and saw he looked maniacal, determined.

  “You’ll never understand. You’re a fool,” he muttered, half to himself. His quavering old voice was still amplified by the microphone he wore, echoing around the roof space and up into the night for all to hear. “This isn’t just about me, Oscar, you brainless boy. It never was.” He turned finally to stare back at his son. “You think they’re helping us? You think they ever helped us?” He laughed, a bitter, dry and cracking sound. “They’ve never helped us,” he growled bitterly. “The wall, our precious wall.” He shook his head. “You really think this is about Tribals and Bonewalkers and vampires?” He raised a shaking finger. “Stupid child! You haven’t even scratched the surface! This is the prelude. You have no idea what’s out there. What’s coming! If you knew…how long this was planned…”

  Oscar had stopped in his tracks, staring at the old man, who continued, in a cracked and desperate voice. “How do you think we captured a vampire, back in the old world? A vampire to study and use, to create the Sentinels…the Pale? Vampires had lived in the world with our kind since the dawn of time, and we’d never managed to overpower them, to force them into the light, let alone into our service. Not even once. So where did Tassoni come from?” He glanced back at Oscar. “Who gave Tassoni over to humans, wrapped in a gift bow? Tassoni was the worst kind of gift. A Trojan horse, delivered to us by enemies of mankind.” He tapped the side of his head. “Enemies who knew how we thought, knew our ambition. Knowing what we would do, knowing what would happen?” He dropped his hand, waving Oscar away like irrelevant trash. It was clear he had no hope of ever making his son understand. He looked back to the fateful switches. “Everything that has happened was orchestrated. They plan, and they are so patient. And you, you don’t even know they exist! But we can stop them.” He looked beseechingly at his son, shaking his bald head in weary despair. “If you only knew what I know. They…they are only foot soldiers.”

  He was seconds from the switches, seconds from launching death into the skies.

  I twisted my arm in the grip of the security guard, almost dislocating my elbow. At the same time, I threw all my weight against the man, throwing us both off balance. My sudden unexpected move took him by surprise, and we both toppled to the floor in a heap. Luckily I landed on top, my elbow in his ribs, knocking the wind out of him. I wrenched my arm free from his grip.

  Scrambling to my feet, I stared desperately around me. Wires were everywhere at my feet, snaking up onto the platform and to the switches that the old man had finally reached. Should I grab them and pull at random? Was it like diffusing a bomb? Red wire, blue wire? Was there even time? I didn’t think so. From the corner of my eye I saw the crowd, everyone’s rapt attention focused on the arguing Scotts on stage. For a second, as I looked up, I thought I glimpsed something else, a flash of dark robes. A Bonewalker, somewhere deep in the huddle. Then it was gone. As though it had never been there.

  Something was pressed into my open hand, and in shock I looked down. The security guard, Marlin Scott’s hired goon was still lying on the floor. He had reached up, and placed a gun, his gun, into my hands. My fingers closed around it, my face a picture of confusion. I looked down at the man. There was something wrong with the security guard’s face. He was so white, and his features looked suddenly slack, as though he were sleeping.

  But his eyes. His eyes were open, and they were black from rim to rim, from lid to lid. D
ark wet pools of emptiness staring up at me as he handed me his gun. I had seen eyes like this before, but never on a human.

  He didn’t speak, but as he stared up at me, in my head, I heard clearly, as though it was my own thought.

  Stop him.

  The voice in my head shocked and chilled me. The voice was familiar, though I hadn’t heard it in years. The command in my brain was the voice of my father.

  They say that in times of great terror, or great stress, that time slows down. I don’t know what truth there is in that, but I do know that as the words rang in my head, my arm raised, and in that moment I was calmly, acutely aware of everything around me. I saw the moonlight beaming down on the rooftop scene, the clouds scudding across the broken sky above us. The dark silhouettes of the spiky buildings surrounding the Ashmolean Museum. I saw the crowd frozen in scandalous rapture, their mouths agog as they stared at the father and son onstage. The fluttering banners and swaying groups of balloons seemed to eddy at the edges of the scene in slow motion. The distant lights of the city twinkling all around us like frozen stars in the blackness. I saw Oscar running down the platform, past the podium, toward his father, whose hand was descending mercilessly, unflinchingly, toward the switches. A breeze rolled across the rooftops.

  I dragged my eyes from the scene and looked down.

  The security guard at my feet, who was no longer, in any real sense, the security guard, but rather something somehow wearing him like a human meat suit, was staring up at me. I could feel the…otherness…rolling off the prone figure in waves, the sheer alien presence of the man I had tackled to the ground. My skin crawled.

  Stop him. My father’s voice again, silently inside my skull. As though he stood by my side.

  Warm wet blood suddenly ran from my nose as the words sounded in my head again, insistent, almost plaintive. Absently I licked my lip, feeling my arm rise as in a dream. I levelled the gun at Marlin Scott, the single most powerful, most dangerous man in the city, and, under no one’s control but my own, knowing exactly what I was doing, I fired.

  There wasn’t screaming immediately. After the gunshot, there was silence.

  Marlin Scott whipped backwards off his feet, as though he’d taken an invisible uppercut. His elderly, wasted body, nothing more than a bag of bones wrapped in a vintage Armani suit, landed heavily on the boards in a heap. Oscar, reaching him a few seconds too late, dropped to his knees, his face slack with shock, his eyes wide as saucers. I saw his hands press to his father’s chest, and come away bloody. His face was a horror.

  That was when the screaming started. Someone in the crowd started it off. Once they saw the blood. I had lowered my arm. It felt numb from the shoulder down. No one was looking at me. Every eyeball on the roof of the Ashmolean was glued to the fallen body of Marlin Scott.

  I felt the gun being gently taken from my hand, and didn’t resist. I felt like a sleepwalker. The security guard at my feet had reclaimed it. Someone shouted something about a shooting. Marlin’s bodyguards, the rest of his security entourage were on stage, all running toward the father and son. I watched numbly as Oscar was pulled off the old man’s body. At first I thought they were dragging him away, thinking he was the attacker. But no. They shielded him with their bodies, manoeuvring him offstage, as he struggled against them, screaming something I couldn’t hear to his father. They were protecting him from the shooter, from the assassin, whoever it was.

  Another scream. People began to panic, rushing into one another. Herd mentality kicked in as the gathered assembly trampled one another in their rush to escape. The security guard at my feet, I was dimly aware, was standing shakily. I looked and saw his eyes were back to normal. He was human again, and he was staring at the gun in his hand as though he had never seen it before. From somewhere far off I heard someone shouted that he had a gun, and people were a confused jumble around me, knocking me off balance. The force of the crowd carried me away from the man. My nose was still bleeding freely, and there was a high pitched buzzing in my head. I felt like I was going to vomit. All I could see, replaying in my head on some infernal loop, was Marlin Scott flying through the air and hitting the boards with a thud, over and over.

  In the panic and confusion, someone tried to grab the security guard, and up on the stage, I saw another of Marlin’s guards raising his weapon, aiming it at the confused man holding a gun by the fireworks controls. There was a second shot in the confusion, and the man fell to the floor, a bullet in his chest. My murder weapon slipped from his grasp to land on the decking with a harmless clatter.

  All eyes were on the dead security guard, the presumed assassin, bleeding on the floor as the crowd parted around him, leaving him alone in an ever increasing circle of empty horror. They thought it was him. They thought he’d shot Marlin Scott. I looked up to the stage where the old man’s body lay, unheeded for the moment. No one else was looking at the stage. Oscar had been dragged away. Everyone else was staring at the dead security guard. Only I was looking at Marlin Scott, the corpse of the man who would have killed every GO. I saw a tall dark shape standing over his body, stooped and hunched like the image of the grim reaper. It hovered over the old man’s body like a greedy vulture, shadow and menace, one long-fingered hand extended hungrily toward the bloodied chest. For a moment I thought it was a Bonewalker, but it was bigger. Taller. Edges blurred like static. I saw, fleetingly, that in its outstretched hand it loosely held a pale mask. And then…it was gone.

  The ringing noise rose in my ears, drowning out the screams and panic around me, making the frantic crowd sound to me like distant noises underwater. My legs gave way underneath me, darkness filling my vision as surely as if I’d been spirited away by the Bonewalkers myself.

  As I fell to the floor, I closed my eyes, too exhausted for anything else.

  42.

  I woke up in Blue Lab, feeling like hell. This was becoming a habit of mine.

  Blearily I looked around. Griff was sitting in a chair by the makeshift gurney-bed I lay atop. He was reading a paperback and sipping coffee. He put down the book when I made some kind of unintelligible, grunting noise.

  “Welcome back, Doc,” he said with a small smile. “I think I’m going to ask for a raise and a promotion to your professional nursemaid if they keep dragging you in here unconscious.” He checked the bleeping monitors of several machines I was unceremoniously hooked up to, seemingly satisfied with whatever they were telling him. “Lucy owes me money,” he muttered. “She said you’d be in a proper coma this time.” He allowed himself a small smile. I noticed he looked tired. “Silly girl, I know you’re tougher than you look.”

  “What…happened?” I rasped. He poured me a glass of ice water, which I took gratefully. I felt like I had the hangover from hell.

  “Scott? The plague? Did we stop it?”

  He helped me sit up, tucking pillows fussily under my back. “Cloves said you’d wake up on full throttle firing off questions,” he said, shaking his head a little. “She knows you better than you think.”

  Cloves was alive then. “Griff,” I insisted. “What happened?”

  “What’s happened is that you’ve been out for the count for a week. Cabal only released you from the Jenner Infirmary and into our custody two days ago, and that was after a hell of a lot of lobbying by Servant Cloves. You’ve been our own sleeping beauty right here since then.” He shrugged, looking at me appraisingly. “Well, if sleeping beauty was covered in cuts and bruises that is,” he amended.

  I sank back on the pillows. A week? I’d been unconscious for a week? I blinked a few times, staring up at the lab’s acoustic ceiling tiles, unable to process this immediately.

  “Cloves said when you woke up, you’d go crazy with questions, so it’s probably easier for you to get the rundown from the news.” He indicated the wall mounted data-screen. “The basic headlines, just to fill in the blanks for you. Industrial multi-millionaire magnate Marlin Scott is dead. Tragically killed by one of his own bodyguards. Also, the power
crisis is over, and someone got a promotion.”

  He waved a hand at the screen and it flickered to life.

  “I’ll go get you a coffee,” he said, patting the back of my hand absently. I stared at him as he left the lab room. The back of his shirt was badly creased and crumpled. I wondered how long had he been sitting here, watching over me and waiting for me to wake up?

  When he was gone, I looked to the screen, sipping my glass of water weakly. Poppy Merriweather sat behind her usual news studio desk, looking every inch the sombre professional.

  “A week after the shocking death of New Oxford’s leading founder, Marlin Scott, tonight at Channel Five we highlight his achievements with an evening paying tribute to the great man’s work. Scott leaves a powerhouse legacy to our people. Building the wall, supplying power to all of New Oxford, and his countless charitable and altruistic works supporting the conservation of important art and artefacts from the old world. Join us this evening where we will be discussing this enigmatic and often reclusive man with his closest peers and associates. A father to many, an inspiration to all.”

  Behind her, a portrait of Marlin Scott, looking distinguished and hard-nosed, stared out from the screen in a black memorial border, the dates of his birth and death in classical white lettering at its base.

  “But first,” Poppy shifted gears, switching to another camera, “a week after the tragic and senseless shooting by one of his own most closely trusted aides, bodyguard Morgan Spencer. We have an exclusive insight with New Oxford psychologist, Hannah Bolton, who asks, are high-pressure jobs pushing us all to breaking point?” Her brow furrowed slightly with journalistic gravitas. “Join us for the full programme, when we will be discussing the importance of work-life balance, and the psychology of a killer.”

  The screen faded to a willowy woman in a white pantsuit, sitting informally in an academic office. She was wearing chunky amber jewellery at her throat and ears, and the stones flashed in the light of the interviewing camera.