The doorway offered little shelter. The door window was rippled but there was no movement beyond.
The lock was an old combination key pad, one she’d seen plenty of in her time. It was a sturdy bugger but no one had thought to take it off the default code. It was almost too easy.
Inside tasted of copper and tin. There was that feeling of holding a battery to your tongue but across the whole body, every nerve tingling like it was expecting to be touched.
Rain rattled off the windows like it was a world away. Mottled light swirled and shifted on dusty floorboards, beaded patterns on bare plaster columns. The building reached far back, more than Amanda would have guessed from the outside.
There was a clean streak through the dust between the front door and the stairs, fresh cigarette ends crushed on the bottom step.
Far above, she could hear a mutter of voices. They’d already started.
She resisted the urge to run. Being fast and stupid wouldn’t help anybody.
The stairs were too solid to creak but every noise she made sounded loud to her ears.
The light was just enough to see by.
She checked the gun again, the feel of it alien in her hand. Her skin crawled, the muscles up her arms ringing with the memory of the recoil of the shotgun. She could feel the ghost of the bruise that still haunted her ribs where the butt had kicked back into her.
But that was a long time ago. She’d be quick, methodical and hope her body didn’t betray her with tremors or hesitations. She would burn the building down if she had to.
Cars continued to hiss by outside, the rain crackling under their tires. Somewhere outside she could hear a fight breaking out.
The first and second floors were empty. The third was darker, the street lights casting their light from below. Candlelight crawled across the ceiling above. She could hear Bridget’s Edinburgh lilt, could hear her excitement.
Amanda didn’t bother with stealth on the final flight. ‘Hey!’ She wanted them off-balance. Anything to disrupt the ritual.
The final few steps and the air closed around her. The anxiety that was settling down on the street below like ash was nothing compared to its potency here. Amanda’s shoulders cinched, her neck tensed, her jaw tightened. She bit her tongue as anger ran like venom through her veins.
After the dark, the top floor was a supernova, the light too bright to see by and the shadows too deep to fathom. At first, she was only getting impressions – four people in the middle of the room, protective circle drawn around them, designed to keep them safe from the thing they summoned.
Bridget stood closest, her spectacles rendered opaque with the candlelight. There was no mistaking her surprise, whatever words she had been saying dying on her tongue.
The two men to one side were people Amanda had once considered friends. The candlelight made them look gaunt, gouging deep shadows in the pits of their cheeks and under their eyes. Rituals were hard, they took something from you and now these men could feel it as a deep ache in their bones.
Then there was the fourth man, the man in the circle.
He was tall, tall as Caleb, but rake thin. His clothes, ragged and stained, didn’t fit him, two or three sizes too large making him seem bigger and thinner both at once. His beard was wild and shaggy, his hair more so. The smell that came off him hit Amanda in a wave; damp cloth, moulding earth and the sweet stench of alcohol.
Everything about his appearance screamed derelict. They’d needed a vessel for the thing to inhabit. What was easier than snatching a homeless man off the street?
He was more, or less, than that now. It was in the way he held himself; straight backed and with a glint in his eye that was more than the light. A smile split his wild beard, revealing terrible teeth. His stained jacket and the rumpled shirt beneath was unbuttoned so that Amanda could see the tangle of tattoos that painted his skin in swirls, shifting, writhing. He eyed Amanda hungrily.
Amanda brought up the gun, pointed it at the guards long enough to get the message across then swung it around to the thing.
She wasn’t too late, the circle on the floor was unbroken, the thing still confined.
‘No!’ Bridget stepped forward, already far too late. ‘Don’t shoot, you’ll kill us!’
The shot took the thing clean in the face. There was a cloud of blood, bone and teeth followed by a wet, tangled thud as it fell to the bare floorboards to leak blood around the islands of candlewax.
There was a long, stunned silence, the gunshot still ringing the air.
The younger of Bridget’s men, barely older than Darren, collapsed to the floor. He began to convulse, eyes wide in shock, limbs juddering and striking the floor.
‘Don’t!’ shouted Bridget, both to Amanda and the other man before either of them could move. ‘You fucking idiot,’ she said to Amanda as she moved to the fitting man’s side, ‘do you realise what you just did?’
‘Just saved your fucking life,’ Amanda snapped. ‘That thing…’
Bridget ripped the fitting man’s shirt open to reveal his chest. Tattoos flowed across his tanned skin, more appearing all the time.
Amanda blinked, looked back at the demon’s body. The skin was clear, tattoo-free. Empty.
‘Did you think it would be that easy?’ asked Bridget, a hand on the comatose man, now demon’s, chest. ‘It could have jumped into any one of us. You could have killed me, then where would we be? Come on.’
Amanda watched, mouth open as Bridget and the remaining man lifted the demon back into the circle. The second guard wore a pale, stretched expression, like he couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. He only nodded and obeyed when Bridget instructed him to move the body of the homeless man.
Muttering beneath her breath, Bridget pressed a thumb to the thing’s head, her free hand describing shapes in the air. She stopped when the thing’s eyelids fluttered.
Amanda only recovered her wits once Bridget stepped back out of the circle, the demon beginning to wake within.
Shifting aim, Amanda touched the gun barrel against Bridget’s cheek. The woman recoiled at the feel if it.
‘Send it back.’
‘What?’
‘You can’t kill it then send it back.’
To Amanda’s surprise the woman stood straighter, looked her in the eye. ‘No.’ She was still shaking, fighting the urge to recoil, eyes filled with defiance. ‘If you had any idea what it took to bring him here. The work and research—’
‘We don’t have time for this.’ Amanda’s gaze kept flicking to the thing as it began to stand. ‘Send it back or I’ll put a bullet in you.’
‘You don’t understand. I control it. This is history. I’m the first to have got a demon to obey. Once I break this circle—’
‘Don’t move.’ Bridget had stepped towards the edge of the circle, her toe a hair away from the fresh paint glistening on the floorboards. She’d almost stepped into it, breaking the line.
‘I told you it’s under control.’
The demon was on its feet again, wearing its new host as comfortably as the last one. The way it watched without fidgeting, the hundred little micro-movements that humans made absent, was disconcerting. Its own gaze didn’t waver. Its eyes were fixed on her now.
‘Yeah, you figured out something that no one ever has before.’
‘Is that so hard to believe?’ Bridget was sweating in the candlelight.
Down from below there came the sound of the door opening and closing, the tread of someone climbing the stairs.
Glancing back, Amanda took a step back so she could cover the stairwell. It was enough time for Bridget to dart a toe and scrape it through the paint.
The darkness thickened, clogging senses and freezing nerves.
The figure in the circle seemed to grow. Every detail of him screamed, like he was in sharper focus than everything around him. Amanda could see every speck of dust, count every individual hair, so much information that it hurt to look at him.
Bridget
turned, looking up into that quiet, intense face as it looked back down at her. She rolled up her sleeve, tugging until it was up over her elbow.
Amanda watched as she delicately placed two fingers to her forearm.
The feeling receded. Amanda could almost see the thing’s aura retreating back into its slender frame. Its absence left a strange vacuum, like a ringing in the ears, broken when Bridget gave a brittle, nervous laugh.
‘It works!’ She looked around as though expecting the others to join in. Among the Abra tattoos on Bridget’s arm, Amanda could make out a fresh one, a scab of blood and ink. It stood out, a professional job opposed to the homemade tats around it.
The creature said nothing. Did nothing. It just followed Bridget with its eyes, the same way a tiger would follow a child capering around its cage.
The gun dipped in Amanda’s hand.
Bridget jabbed a finger at the thing. ‘Tell me your name!’
It stared at her, stared so long that Bridget’s pointed finger began to curl. Her thumb dug into the forearm tattoo, denting the skin.
The thing’s voice was a rasp, vocal cords shaking off rust, ‘…Reeves.’
‘Reeves,’ repeated Bridget, turning to everyone with a childlike smile of satisfaction. ‘His name’s Reeves. You see? Can you believe you almost stopped this from happening? I’m about to take this organisation to new heights. The things that we’re going to be able to do now with this wee beauty on our side. This is going to change the world.’ She clapped her hands.
Amanda raised the gun.
She didn’t even see it move, it was suddenly there in front of her, eyes locked with hers. It studied her and then tasted her name.
‘Amanda.’
The gun slipped from Amanda’s fingers, every nerve in her body shutting down. She fell backwards, the breath pushed out of her from the impact.
The thing stepped forward, a grin stretched across its face, slender fingers uncurling, red thirst building—
‘Stop!’
And it did, its eyes flashing pure fury. Bridget breathed another relieved smile.
Feeling returning, Amanda snatched the weapon from the floor, but Bridget was between them again. ‘You see? I control it!’
‘Amanda.’ Jamison was breathless from the stairs, the top button of his shirt undone. ‘Put… the gun down.’
Amanda gritted her teeth looking from her old teacher to the thing standing over her.
Jamison eyed the thing up and down. If he was disconcerted by its gaze he didn’t show it.
‘Jamison, this thing needs to be put back. Right now.’
‘We have just made history,’ said Bridget. ‘No one in the history of magic has attempted this and succeeded.’
‘Amanda, I want you to come outside with me,’ said Jamison.
‘Jamison, if we don’t—’
‘Come with me now.’ Jamison descended the stairs again, grunting with each step.
Bridget smirked with satisfaction.
Reeves was taking in the room, dipping a finger into the hot wax of a nearby candle. But it wouldn’t stop looking at her, like they were the only two in the room.
Amanda got to her feet. ‘You’ve just fucked us all,’ she said. ‘That thing is going to get you all killed and it’ll kill and kill and it won’t stop until it decides it’s finished.’
‘I pity your lack of vision,’ was all Bridget replied.
Amanda caught up with Jamison outside. The rain had eased. The traffic crawled past.
‘They’ve made a huge mistake,’ Amanda started.
‘What were you doing in there?’
‘Your new boss was gunning to recruit my son. Darren told me about Bridget’s project, he’s been helping collect the ingredients. Did you know about any of this?’
‘I only just found out. I knew she was getting close with her research but…’ Jamison sighed. ‘I’ll talk to him about your boy.’
‘He even listen to you?’
‘You don’t think I’ve been trying? He has no respect for the business. AK’s a soldier not a leader. That’s why the Indians picked him. He just told them what they wanted to hear so he could win but he doesn’t know what to do with the prize. Everything we built he’s pulling down around his ears.’
‘Then he needs to be out. You need to take him out. Take his place.’
Jamison sighed. ‘I’m old, Amanda. I’m old and I don’t want the responsibility.’
‘Responsibility found you. There’s no one else that can do it. That thing in there is going to get us all killed.’
‘She had it under control.’
‘But for how long? My old man used to talk about this as something he wouldn’t do. That’s how fucking bad this is. It needs to be stopped before it gets worse.’
‘There’s nothing we can do.’
‘We cannot afford to mess with this shit.’
‘“We” aren’t. It’s just me. And if things go wrong, it’ll be just you.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Did you think you could just hit the boss in the face and walk away? I promised the Indians that if this went wrong the Abra-killer would be on hand to contain it.’
‘You promised me away again?’
‘What choice did I have? I’m trying to protect you from your own stupid decisions. If that thing breaks loose then you’ll be the one hunting it or AK and the Indians will have no reason to let you live.’
‘Fuck that. You guys made this mess. If that thing escapes I’m the least of your problems. You can go to hell with the rest of them.’
Amanda walked out into the rain.
‘It’s already seen you,’ Jamison called after her. ‘It doesn’t matter what I agreed. If things go wrong, you’re in this already. You were here, it’ll come after you. You saw to that.’
Amanda didn’t look back. There was blood running in the gutter and Amanda remembered hearing a fight outside. Reeves had claimed his first victim already.
Chapter 13
Amanda
The present – eighty-six hours to destination
‘Bullshit!’ Skeebs waved the knife, trembling with anger at Amanda’s story.
Amanda had managed to position herself back between Skeebs and prisoner. Steph clung to the wall, her mother’s knife trembling at her chest like she’d just been dunked in icy water.
‘You think I’m fucking stupid.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘No, no, no. It’s you. You’ll say fucking anything to have it your way. Well, I ain’t one of your marks. You tell him the same thing?’ The knife point jabbed at Caleb.
Amanda flexed her fingers, the tips tingling with adrenalin. She could see Skeebs’ anger building, overriding his caution. He’d be trying for Reeves again any moment and Amanda didn’t know what she would be able to do to stop him.
She glanced over to Steph, the girl staring right back, looking for some kind of signal from her. If they were going to make it through this it would have to be together.
Seeing something of the woman’s thoughts in her eyes, Steph began to slide along the wall, further out of Skeebs’ peripheral vision.
‘That’s why we’re headed to the stone circle,’ said Amanda, trying to distract him, not knowing what the girl was up to. ‘We kill it there, it can’t jump—’
‘Stop! Just fucking stop. I’m trying to think.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
The girl was along the wall, out of sight. Skeebs would notice any second, demand she come back. She could see Steph eyeing the space between them, judging the distance. She was reaching the same conclusion as Amanda, she was too far to attack, Skeebs would turn in plenty of time.
‘Come on, Skeebs,’ Amanda kept his attention, kept talking. ‘I can’t risk having you around if I think you’re going to do this. I need to see my daughter again.’
‘Yeah and I need to see my brother. This is on you. It’s all on you.’
Amanda was s
weating, could feel it cool in the frigid air. She wished she could say that was the only reason she was shivering. She was no good at fighting, had neither the strength nor the stomach even when she was riding on her father’s rage. Skeebs was angry, desperate, willing to take this so much further than she was. Conviction counted for a lot in something like this. He wanted things to be simple, wanted this to all be over.
The girl screamed, a high-pitched shriek that rang through the tight confines of the carriage.
Alarmed, Skeebs turned. Amanda lunged.
But the boy was quick, waving the blade, forcing Amanda to jump back. She could do nothing but retreat as the knife flicked between them, cutting at the air.
Steph gave a frightened squeak, pushing along the wall to get away.
A grin flickered across Skeebs’ face but there was no joy in it, just an animal sense of victory.
He went after her, knife raised for a downward stab. Amanda managed to grab his forearm, but the boy’s momentum carried them both backwards.
The heel of Amanda’s boot caught in Caleb’s sleeping bag and they both went over, falling across the big man’s legs. The landing worked in Skeebs’ favour, the knife jarring in their combined grip, coming down at Amanda. She just had the presence of mind to push up, steering the blade so it only took a bite out the shoulder of her coat.
They wrestled, the blade tip screeching on the floor.
Amanda’s back was arched uncomfortably over Caleb’s shins, vertebrae creaking, muscles straining as she tried to push the blade away. Skeebs’ pulled it, aiming to score it down across Amanda’s shoulder and torso.
She could hear Steph saying something but her heart was pounding too loud to hear. Skeebs’ breath clouded her face. The grin was gone now, his brow creased in furious concentration.
Youth was winning out. Amanda could feel herself tiring.
Sensing it too, Skeebs jerked away bringing the knife up to stab it down and all Amanda could do was inhale and wait for the pain. God, let Michaela be OK without her.
The knife stayed in the air, and Skeebs’ snarl cracked down the middle, concern flashing.
He wasn’t going to do it, Amanda realised. He didn’t have it in him. They were frozen, both of them unsure what had to happen next, each as unwilling to inflict pain as the other.
The End of the Line Page 15
