by Lee Isserow
“What do you expect me to do with this?” she asked.
He sighed, placed the wooden point against the malleable flesh of Jules's brow, and dug it in until it tore through the skin. A bead of blood formed at the point of entry.
“You're kidding!” She caught his eye, and realised he was not.
The monochromatic goop and the blood mingled together on top of the wound for a moment. Then the red seemed to vanish, the skin around it became tighter as it healed. And the grey slime proceeded to dry, and then vanish, as soon as its job was done.
Ana reached over to the lip of the bottle and soaked the tip of the toothpick in the cure-all. She placed it against his arm, but couldn't get purchase. The skin swum around, as if it weren't a part of him, just a layer of thick leather he was wearing over his body.
“I don't know if I can do this. . .”
“You can do it. Stretch the skin out and push down hard.”
“That's not what I mean.”
Rafe looked over to her, and shot a reassuring smile. “It's for his own good. Can't have him walking around with his skin slipping and sliding everywhere. . .”
Ana nodded, stretched the skin as best she could with her left hand, and held the toothpick with her right. She took a breath, looked away, and forced it down until she felt it tear, then pulled the wooden point out, and watched anxiously to make sure it was working.
When the skin began to tighten of its own volition, she breathed a sigh of relief, and realised she had kept her breath held for far too long. . . It was an awful prospect, to have to carry out the acupuncture to his whole body. But it was worth it, just as his pain was, if it meant they could catch the people who had put him in the situation in the first damn place.
“You get the pleasure of fixing up his groin,” Rafe muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Not sure I can handle it. . .”
“His penis?”
“Lancing a penis. . . it's a little close to home, y'know?”
“No I don't know. . . but if you're going to be a baby, then fine, I'll do it. You get to fix his arsehole.”
“You take me to the nicest places, and we always have the best and most fun of times, have I ever mentioned that?” he replied, glibly.
“Yeah, it was totally my shady employer that got us here in the first place. . .”
They chuckled and continued to work in silence as they made their way down his body, fixing all the damage done in the process of attempting to trace the call.
“He's a good man,” Ana muttered. “He doesn't deserve this, any of this.”
“It's always the good that have to suffer. . . probably because they're good.”
“Is that why you sit on the fence between good and arsehole?”
“I think I'm more on the arsehole side, and pop over to good every now and then.”
She smiled at his self-deprecation, and knew that Rafe would never think of himself as a good person. It was one of the things about him that proved just how virtuous he was―albeit some form of virtuous that had ragged and rough edges, with a moral compass that verged on questionable at times.
A groan interrupted their conversation, movement in their periphery as Jules began to come to. He clenched his teeth and grunted through the pain.
“Why am I in so much damn agony―and why the hell are my pants off?!”
Ana and Rafe glanced at each other, both waiting for the other to explain. But neither would have to attempt to find the words, as Carrogan chimed in before they could even start.
“I believe I have what y'looking for. . .”
He gestured to the bowl, the blood thick and congealed, starting to get brown and crusty at the edges. Across the surface of the dark crimson sludge was a raised series of lines.
“Are those streets?” Ana asked.
Carrogan nodded.
“They don't have names. . .”
“Don't need 'em.”
He threw his fingers across the top of the bowl, and the lines shrunk to the centre, more rippled in from the edges, as if he were zooming out of the map.
“Y'all see where it is, geographically speaking?”
“Somewhere in London?” Jules grunted.
Carrogan rolled his eyes, and cast another sigil over the bowl. It zoomed back in to the original view, and deeper still, the lines on the surface of the blood lifted from the bowl, an inch, then two then three, as a three-dimensional representation of the streets and building in question rose up. It was right next to a brown, crusty miniature of the Royal Albert Hall.
“Y'best know where that is, ain't got long left. . .”
Ana nodded. She knew it, and she could conjure a door right there.
All the blood in the bowl was starting to become dry and hard. The building crumbled into a flaky pile of scabs. Within a minute, all the blood was dessicated and dead.
Carrogan picked himself up and dropped the ancient bowl in the trash.
“That seems like a waste. . .” Ana muttered, as she returned to her task of healing the skin on Jules's legs.
“There are more,” Carrogan grunted.
“Why don't you just re-use it? Ever heard of recycling”
He huffed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean up that much dried blood?”
She decided it was better not to answer at all, whatever she said, he was going to say something condescending back, and probably use it as an excuse to navigate her body with his squinting eyes all over again.
“Y'all diluted that panchrest, right?”
Rafe glanced over. “No, you didn't say anything about diluting it. . .”
“I surely did. Would have been irresponsible otherwise.”
“What happens if they don't dilute it?” Jules asked with a wince, as another toothpick dug into the meat of his ankle.
“Nothing much.”
“Apothecarian said there are side effects from overdoses. . .” Rafe shot back.
“Oh, pah! Side effects. There are probably no side effects.”
“Probably?”
“Definitely. Maybe.”
The three of them stared at Carrogan, who shrugged off their wide eyes, and picked up the bag of intestines Rafe had procured from the coroner.
“What that for?” Jules asked with a bite of his lip, as another two skewers tore into his skin. “Gonna help me heal up too?”
Carrogan laughed, a hollow and dry cackle that none of them found very settling. “Course not. This is lunch! You're staying for lunch, right?” He took a bite of the raw intestine. Dribbles of a thick brown and red sludge escaped his lips, and made a break for it down his chin.
In that moment, no matter how injured Jules was, and without a word spoken aloud, all three of them agreed that they were certainly not staying for lunch.
Chapter 37
Their answer was obvious
As they stood outside the building in question, it didn't seem right to any of them. There had to have been a mistake. But not only did Rafe have faith that Carrogan's tracking castings were accurate, he knew better than to doubt Ana's crystal clear memory.
“What the hell would kidnappers be doing in the Royal College of Art?” Ana asked, as she looked beyond the sign above the door, with seven floors of brick building loomed over them.
Each floor had a myriad windows, from which those inside could be viewed. It was hardly the kind of place from which to run an illegal operation. Even if it wasn't for all the windows, there were students milling around. It was hard to believe that Akif and Natan were being held there.
The three threw caution to the wind and entered, Jules covered the cameras with shadows as they did so, Ana mesmerised the security guards before they could ask to see their identification. They headed to the closest staircase and started the climb up through the spine of the building. Elevators would have been faster, but they would have had cameras and they wouldn't know what was waiting to them when the doors opened at the top floor. A portal through
shadows would have been faster still, but there was no way to tell what wards were on the building, let alone if it was enchanted to warn the kidnappers should a portal or realm-flip be implemented.
Ana was certain the top floor was where the call originated. In her memory of the blood-miniature, the whole level was throbbing, and one set of windows moved more so than the rest of it, as if to indicate that was where it had come from.
Of course, that was only her assumption, and as they got closer to their destination with every step, and every stair, she regretted not clarifying that with Carrogan.
As they reached the top floor, Rafe pulled the door open a crack and peeked around at the hallway beyond. It was empty, no sign of students or their tutors, but there were security cameras.
“Two cameras over―”
“Yeah, already made them dark,” Jules growled, with a motion for Rafe to move away from the door. He was going to take the lead, and he was going to make whatever bastard got in his way suffer for taking his family from him.
“Calm him down,” Rafe instructed. “He shouldn't go in hot like that. . .”
“I don't think there's anything I can say to calm him down,” Ana replied in a hushed tone, as she skirted along behind Jules, who came to a stop at the end of the hallway.
“Where now?” he asked.
Ana dug into the memory of the miniature of the building and re-oriented it to face the way they were headed. “Left. Last door.”
Jules glanced over, and Ana saw his eyes glimmer for a moment, the emerald shine enveloped almost instantly by the black of his iris.
“Empty,” he grunted. “Sure you're right about this?”
Ana nodded.
“You sure you're right about it being empty?” Rafe asked. He regretted it instantly when Jules's black stare whipped around and burned into him.
“I can see through every damn shadow on the floor. They're not here.”
“What if they're cloaked?” Ana asked.
Jules snarled, his fingers left his sides, spread out wide. The shadows tore from the walls and floors, from beneath the carpets and from behind light fixtures. They wove together, created a criss cross of ebony netting that filled the corridors and every room on the floor.
“See? Nothing,” he threw his hands in the air, and sent the shadows back from whence they came. “Just a wild gods-damned goose chase. . .”
A ringing pierced the silent corridor, a call in the periphery. But it was not just in Jules's periphery. All three of them could hear it. They glanced at one another, and on a silent count, answered the call.
“Trying to find us was a mistake.” The voice was distorted, an enchantment on the call making it indiscernible as to whether it was male or female. Whichever it was, they sounded like they were angry. “Your husband and son will pay the price. . .”
“No!” Jules shouted, his fingers curled into fists at his side, sharp spikes with shadows ripped through the carpet below, threw doors from hinges, and punched the drop ceiling tiles to the floor.
Ana reached for his arm, in the hope that she could calm him. A black spear shot out of his ebony skin, tore through her palm, its razor-sharp tip stopped just before it pierced her chest.
Jules turned to her, with eyes thick with tears. “Sorry. . .” he muttered, “I'm so sorry. . .”
The spike withdrew, slid back through her hand. He reached for it, took it in his, and glyphed her with his thumb.
She couldn't help notice that the hole in his arm that launched the spike did not bleed. There was no flesh beneath the layer of skin, just darkness, as if the shadows literally flowed through his body, and made up a large percentage of his being. Larger than she had ever imagined.
“You have one more chance. One more church. Screw with us, and you'll be looking for pieces of your loved ones for the rest of your life―you hear me?”
The call cut off before they could respond, but their answer was obvious. They were going to do as they were told. And even though the Circle would be waiting for them, with every single one of their operatives ready to take them down, not a damn thing was going to stand in their way.
Chapter 38
Enchantments 101
On any day of the week, St Mary Magdalen of Bermondsey looked as though it was a castle, with its solid construction and two tiers of turrets. But for the first time since its consecration, it had the army to back up the architectural motifs.
Hundreds of Circle operatives had been brought in from all over the world to secure it, each team of ten to fifteen agents led by an adept. It was an operation for the record books, the largest in history every orchestrated for a situation that did not involve a foe that was a god of some description. They were prepared for anything to come at them from the shadows or from reflections.
However, Rafe knew their operational guidelines, and made certain they would not be prepared for what he had in store for anyone who stood in the way of their goal.
The front of the church, on Bermondsey Street was locked up tight, close to a hundred agents milled around. All three of the fugitives knew it would be impossible to get past them. . . but the grounds behind the building were less well guarded. They comprised of close to a hundred square metres of lawn, with four entrances and a simple wrought iron fence that surrounded the park. Despite several teams being stationed at various points across the grounds, they weren't going to be as coordinated as the throng of operatives at the front, and that was going to work to their advantage.
There was only a single squad of ten stationed at the farthest gate to the church. Given that there was a hundred metres of grass between the gate and the wellspring, with a number of other teams in the way, it was considered the least likely point of entry.
The operatives were hidden in plain sight by the enchantments on their tactical gear. Any mundane that might pass them would have taken the light dancing through their forms as an optical illusion. They communicated to one another, but their words were taken straight from their voiceboxes and sent through the ether to the ear canal of the others on their channel. Each had tactical castings just waiting to be sealed and launched at anyone that dare move in the direction of the final London wellspring.
Despite three of them being equipped with goggles that allowed them to see into the Shadow Realm, with a further three able to see into the Mirror Realm, the attack on them would not come from either.
The sound of wood on metal rang out across the street. A rickety clang that was followed by another identical sound, then another. Light swum through the air as the team investigated the source. There was no sign of anyone in the Shadow Realm, nor in the Mirror Realm, and yet the sound continued, and it was getting closer.
The operatives edged towards the source cautiously, and it appeared to cease. As they approached, they discovered a walking stick sidled up to the iron bars of the fence, as if it had been found and placed there by some helpful citizen. There was something about it that made it stand apart from the average walking stick. For one thing, it appeared to have a leathery texture, closer to skin than wood. It also glistened in the sunshine, which made the flaws on the surface stand out, longitudinal ridges that looked more like the skin of a snake than the hide of a cow.
“See anything?” the team leader asked those that could see into the Mirror and Shadow Realms.
He did not get to receive an answer, as the stick flew from its stationary position by the fence, and its handle slammed into the goggles of one of the Mirror-seers. The butt whipped around to incapacitate another's. It pirouetted through the attempts of the squad to grab it, and thrashed back and forth between the faces of the remaining goggle-wearers like a targeted pinball, quickly destroying the entire team's ability to see into other realms.
They were under attack, and the call went out for members of the team to seal their sigils and take the damn thing down―but none of them would get the opportunity to do so.
Before they could act, they found themselves bound togethe
r as a large Persian rug came from behind them. It wrapped around the squad, slammed the ten of them against one another, and restricted their movements so none of their castings could be fired off.
The team leader made to communicate with his operator back at the Epicentre, but as soon as contact was made, he had no words with which to express what had just befallen him and his team. His pupils had shrunk to the size of pinpricks, as had those of his entire unit. Their minds blank, as the mesmerisation took all thoughts from their heads and sealed them in a glass box at the farthest reaches of their consciousnesses.
Rafe returned to the alley where Jules and Ana had been watching, whilst the rug dragged the ten barely visible operatives behind him, and Sticky tapped cheerfully on the pavement alongside the two of them.
“I didn't believe that would work,” Ana confessed.
“You gotta learn to have more faith in me. . .” Rafe scoffed.
“I'll take that on board as soon as we know that one of these guys' uniforms will fit me. . .” she said, as the rug dropped the ten Circle operatives on the ground, and she began to size herself up against the barely visible bodies.
“Enchantments 101,” Rafe said as he started to undress one of the men. “Any set of clothing can fit anyone. . .”
The man he was taking the uniform from became visible as the clothes were removed, and he proved himself to be massive, a good three inches taller than Rafe, and had at least a hundred pounds of muscle on him. Yet as soon as Rafe put the tactical jacket and trousers on, they contracted to fit the contours of his body, and he all but disappeared from view.
“Now you're just showing off. . .” Ana muttered, as she tugged the clothes off her chosen operative and threw them on top of her own.
“This'll only get us so far,” Jules said, as he disappeared from view. “They'll question why three operatives are out of formation and walking up to the church.”
