Kershaw eyed George darkly. “Something you’re not telling us, Wheatcroft?”
George shrugged off the comment. “Please. I’m just saying, we’ve seen it all through history. Some people will fight to their deaths if they think they’re right. Doesn’t matter whether that’s true or not. Just look at Hitler.”
“Or Saddam,” Melissa agreed.
“And Jack the Ripper,” Darren added.
Kershaw turned up his lip. “Jack the Ripper? We’re talking real people here, not fiction.”
“Jack the Ripper was real!” Darren protested. “They’ve got records of his crimes and everything. He wasn’t some Sherlock Holmes fucker popped straight out of someone’s pencil to the page.”
Kershaw scowled. “Prove it.”
“How am I supposed to prove it?” Darren asked.
Kershaw smirked. “Exactly.”
“I bet Her Majesty would know,” Melissa commented. “She’s older than most of us, isn’t she? Especially if you count her living years.”
Darren placed a hand over his heart. “Longest-serving queen of England, God bless her soul.”
“Longest reigning queen of the paranormal court, too,” Kershaw added. “Impressive titles to bear.”
George looked around at the group. Several other specters were now appearing around the Recess, coming off their own watch duties and meeting friends for a chinwag. He wondered whether now would be the time to test the waters.
“About that,” he started, staring at the floor. “How the whole line of succession works? Like, when does the next ruler take over, and all that jazz?”
They all thought about it, then shook their heads.
“No idea,” Melissa replied. “All I’ve ever known is Vicky— Ow!”
Kershaw chuckled as Melissa picked up the small square lighter he had thrown at her head. A trinket he had forgotten was in his pocket when he died, and now accompanied him wherever he went. Shame it was mostly useless in spectral form. “You watch how you address Her Majesty,” he warned. “Or I’ll set her dogs on you, and you’ll find yourself on the other side of the fucking abyss, you got that?”
Melissa looked as if she wanted to argue but thought better of it.
They fell into a thoughtful silence, each dealing with their nerves about the unknowns to come. In the far corners, specters nattered to each other, discussing the excitement the hunt for Rogue was bringing to their sleepy organization. London city center had been something of a null zone for some years, generally speaking.
While there was news brewing of some antics across the ocean, London remained under strict rule by Queen Victoria, so Rogue was the talk of the town. The specters—many of whom had had nothing more to do than roam London and occasionally haunt their descendants—were glad of something new to talk about.
“She’s right, you know.” Darren spoke up sheepishly. “All we’ve ever known is Victoria, but it wasn’t always her, was it? I wonder when a new monarch will come in?”
Darren wilted like a plant attacked with fire when Kershaw shot him a look.
“It’s not our business to know the inner workings of the court,” Kershaw snapped. “It’s our business to serve whoever is deemed worthy of accommodating the throne.” He glared at George and Melissa. “Any more of that kind of talk, and I’ll be forced to report you for seeding mutiny. You got that?”
Before they could nod their heads, voices rose behind them. A group of specters was in the middle of a heated discussion, in which one trail-away voice spoke above everyone else. “From what I’ve heard, he’s on her track right now. Drek’s got a nose for this kind of thing. I’m telling you, give it a few hours, and she’ll be pretty putty in our hands.”
The group exploded in raucous laughter.
Kershaw raised his head and called over to the specters. The loud-mouthed specter was a woman with broad shoulders and a heavy brow.
“Problem, Kershaw?”
“You got a lead on the girl, C?”
The woman held his gaze, a pregnant pause in the air as the others fell quiet. Her jaw clenched. She opened and closed her fists. “How many times I gotta tell ya? My name’s Clandestiny. Don’t fucking shorten it, okay?”
“I’m not calling you that.” Kershaw chuckled. “Ridiculous name. You say you might know where she is?”
“Drek does. He’s headed there right now. Spotted her not too far from here, actually. Oxford Circus. Right in the heart of human activity. Clever, really. Hiding in the open among all the other humans. It’ll be like a Where’s Fucking Wally book.”
Kershaw rose to his feet. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, you know where we’re going, don’t you?”
Darren, Melissa, George, and the others looked at him.
Melissa groaned. “We’ve been on watch all night. Can’t we have a few hours rest?”
“Yeah, Kershaw. Give your ladies a break. Leave all the glory hunting to the real men,” Clandestiny scoffed.
Now it was Kershaw’s turn to clench his fists, his inner mind battling with folly and pride. “You calling yourself a man?”
Clandestiny sneered. “I’m more of a man than you’ll ever be.”
Kershaw smirked. “Oh? Why don’t you prove it?”
The specters around Clandestiny stepped back. Other specters in the Recess had stopped talking and now watched with quiet fascination.
“You’re toast, mate,” she boasted, before charging at Kershaw.
Northwest London
“Now, this is more like it!” Jennie laughed over the roar of the wind rushing through the open windows. Her GT500 sped down the dual carriageway with ease, accelerating at the touch of the pedal, braking, and switching lanes as if it had a mind of its own. The car chewed up the road as if it hadn’t eaten for months.
Lupe sat in the back in between Carolyn and Feng Mian. Baxter took the front passenger seat, and Angus and Paige hovered in the gaps in-between. Although the specters were immaterial, Lupe still bunched his shoulders as if he’d been crammed in with four mortal humans.
“You might want to slow down a bit,” Baxter advised. “You’ve only just got the car back. Do you really want it to go to the shop again if we slam into the car in front?”
“Don’t forget about the cops,” Lupe added.
Jennie laughed. “Come on, guys. Do you really think I haven’t learned a thing or two about evading the police? I’ve been in this business for years, and there’s no way we’ll get caught. I know every camera, every hotspot, every place they try to pick up speeders.” She stroked the steering wheel. “Plus, they’ll never find us in my new baby.”
The car was slick and looked brand-new. The garage had done a stellar job respraying the bright, gleaming red into a midnight black that didn’t just reflect color but seemed to absorb it.
“All it will take is a detour down a quiet street, then turn off the lights, and the pigs will whizz right by us as if we don’t even exist.”
“Pigs?” Lupe asked.
“5-0,” Angus replied. He frowned at Lupe’s blank face. “Boys in blue? Bobbies? Peelers?”
“Cops,” Baxter clarified, remembering the conversation he’d had with Jennie.
“Ignore them,” Carolyn called, her head hanging out the window. “This thing is built for speed. Open the kitty up and let her purr!”
Jennie obliged, expertly navigating the roads around the outskirts of London. When they grew closer to the epicenter of London, Jennie closed all the windows, the tinted glass barring anyone’s view of the inside of the car.
They slowed down significantly, joining the flow of traffic. Jennie had taken every precaution she could think of—including switching her license plate with a dummy one. They kept their eyes peeled as they drove past some of London’s most prominent landmarks.
“There’s a car park a little way from Westminster,” Jennie told them. “We’ll duck the car inside and head over from there.”
When parked, Jennie latched onto Angus and disguise
d herself as a fifty-something man with a slight beer gut protruding through the buttons of his shirt. She was smartly dressed, with a fair crop of hair, and she kept her head up as she strolled through the alleyway and toward the hatch Angus now held open for her and Lupe.
They jumped down the hatch into the hidden lair of the Obake and followed the tunnel systems to a locked door, which Angus opened.
Candlelight revealed a large room. The thick layer of dust told Jennie no mortal had been there for a very, very long time.
“Charming place you’ve got here,” Jennie remarked.
A number of specters appeared in a circle around her, each one of them an exact clone of the fifty-something man she embodied. “Oh, right.”
Jennie released Angus’ energy, and the room was filled with gasps of shock.
Angus and Paige calmed the Obake and explained Rogue was here to help them. There was some muttering among the group, and when Jennie drew the sword from her side, the room fell silent.
“Impossible,” an old woman gasped, her strands of gray hair falling like cobwebs off her head.
“Not really,” Jennie told her. “You’ve just got to know how to exploit the male tendency to think with their reproductive systems. Easy in this case, since the man was a deviant.”
The woman grimaced. “You slept with the man who stole the saber?”
“Hell, no!” Jennie protested. “I’m sorry, I’m not that kind of girl. He has some explaining to do when he wakes up with a nasty headache sometime in the next few hours. Besides, it’s hardly stealing if he inherited a blade which specters can’t touch, is it?”
“Speaking of,” Angus urged the woman eagerly. “Isn’t it about time we test your enchantment and break the spell?”
Jennie placed the sword in the center of the room. She took a few steps back, and the specters joined her. They kept a respectful distance from the saber, which was known to send specters to permanent death if they so much as touched it.
The ancient woman bent over the blade and withdrew her parchment from her pocket. She muttered the words and waved her arms over the blade for tense minutes.
Jennie glanced at Baxter, eyebrow raised. Baxter shrugged. They weren’t sure what to expect. Having dealt with items like this in the past, Jennie knew the reaction could be anything from a small shower of sparks to a sudden blast of energy which would wipe out everyone in the room in one go.
Though the latter had only happened once, those bastards had deserved it. Who tries to set off a bomb imbued with spectral energy in the middle of a train station?
When it was clear nothing special was happening, the old woman stepped back and scratched her head. She waved the parchment at the saber and glared at Jennie. “Are you sure this is the genuine artifact?”
“I don’t know,” Jennie told her acidly. “Why don’t you touch it and see?”
The old woman looked like she was genuinely contemplating it for a moment. Then she threw her arms angrily into the air. The paper flew out of her hand. “I don’t get it!”
Jennie rolled her eyes and picked up the paper from the floor. The spectral yellowed parchment was covered in characters from a language long lost to common knowledge.
“Don’t even bother trying,” the woman told her with a dismissive chuckle. “It’s Latin. Only those with a classical education can read the ancient scrolls. Some twenty-something conduit doesn’t stand a chance.”
Several specters around the room. Those who knew the truth about Jennie’s powers and life shuffled awkwardly. They knew better than to anger her.
Jennie remained calm. “I understand what it must be like to be ancient as far as mortality goes, but I’ll warn you now the worst thing you can do in life is to evaluate people based on their looks.” She held the parchment up and scanned the words, then turned it over and pointed to four lines of hastily written script. “Luckily for you, I’m here. This says you need a powerful conduit to provide energy for your enchantment in order to break the spell. Maybe you skipped that bit? It must have been hard to read this small writing from up on your high horse.”
The woman scowled at the chuckles from the other specters and put her hands on her hips. “Very well, then. Let’s try it your way.”
“No,” Jennie told her with a smile. “Let’s work together. It’s the only way this will work. You read the spell, and let me do my thing.”
Jennie lowered herself to one knee and placed the flat of her palm against the blade. As the old woman muttered and spoke the words of the parchment, Jennie concentrated on feeling every specter in the room. She called their power to her, ignoring the gasps as tendrils of energy came forth from every specter in the room.
They snaked through the air, seeking Jennie. In the moments before they connected, she heard several exclamations and felt some of the specters resisting, terrified that in connecting to her they would be connecting to the blade, and thus be risking their lives.
But Jennie knew better than that.”Relax. It’s fine,” she assured them.
The energy connected with her, making Jennie the axis of the circle of spectral energy. The power came alive in her body, filling her with a glowing warmth she concentrated on sending into the blade.
An electric hum filled the air as the energy connected. The specters stared wide-eyed as Jennie took a step backward and the saber lifted off the floor. Its blade and hilt glowed in a violent white light that stung their eyes as it increased in intensity with each repetition of the spell.
The old woman dropped the paper, now speaking the lines without conscious thought. After several more repetitions, the light reached a dazzling crescendo, and a blast of light exploded outwards from the saber with a final word from the woman.
The specters fell back, stunned. Lupe and Jennie were thrown to the floor.
The sword hovered, glowing in the darkness. Then they heard it clatter to the floor.
“Is it…Is it done?” Angus asked.
“Is everyone okay?” Paige asked as she felt around the room to re-light the candles. “Is anyone hurt?”
The specters confirmed they were okay as they picked themselves up off the floor and gathered around the blade.
“It doesn’t look any different,” Angus commented.
Jennie knelt once more and tried to feel the energy inside. “It certainly feels different. Who’s going to be the first test dummy?”
The specters of the Obake turned to each other, every one of them excited but reluctant to be the first to risk holding the blade.
Angus moved closer to the saber. “I’ll do it. I’m the leader, so it should be me who sacrifices for the ultimate weapon.” His hands shook as he reached for the hilt of the sword. When he was inches away, he took a deep breath and steeled himself to pick it up.
His hand grasped thin air.
“It’s mine!” the old woman shrieked, snatching the saber before Angus got to it. She held the blade high in the air and stared at it apprehensively as if she might explode at any minute.
After a few seconds, when it was clear it was safe, she swung the sword in clumsy figure-eights around her body. “Ha! It’s mine! At last, it’s mine!”
“Heather, what are you doing?” Paige said. “Give the blade to Angus.”
“Yeah, right. As if I’m going to just hand over the ultimate weapon. You want it, come and claim it.” She jabbed the blade threateningly in the air.
Angus raised his hands and paused his advance. “Heather, be careful. We’re not even sure how the power of the blade works. You don’t know what it’s capabilities are.”
Heather lowered the sword. “You’re right. Here. Let’s try something.”
In a rapid move, Heather slashed the specter beside her. The blade cut a line from the top of his head to his stomach. White light immediately began to spill from where the sword had carved.
A second later, the specter shrieked, and white light exploded from the place where he stood. When the light had gone, so was the specter.<
br />
Heather cackled in delight while the others looked at her in horror. “There’s your answer! It works! It works!”
Paige took a step forward with her palms held out. “Heather, please. What is all of this about? Why are you doing this?”
Heather’s cackle turned into a long cough. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “All these years roaming this Earth as a specter, searching for other shapeshifters and wondering what the hell I was and why I was so different from everyone else. You’d think being initiated into the royal order of the Obake would be a lifelong dream accomplished, wouldn’t you?”
She looked at the others for a response but continued before anyone could speak. “Wrong! Do you know how long I spent wondering when my time would come? When I’d get a chance to have some kind of success? Lead a pack? Make it to the big time?
“Then I came across you.” She glared at Angus. “A man who squanders our powers and keeps us in these dark rooms beneath London. You’re a weed trying to lead a bushel of roses.” Her voice grew louder, her words more shrill. “We could be anything we want! We can literally transform to whoever we want! We could sit on the queen’s fucking throne, for all anyone would know. And what do we do? Take your stupid oath and rot in the dungeons below the city. Well, no more! I’m taking control of the order, and I’m spreading my wings and flying free. Who’s with me?”
She looked expectantly around at the specters, but none met her eye.
“What are you talking about?” Angus said. “We never asked you to take an oath.”
“Bullshit!” Heather screeched, lashing out and destroying another specter. The blinding light dazzled everyone with its intensity. “Absolute bullshit! I’ve got the most powerful spectral weapon in the world, and I’m going to use it. If you don’t want to follow me, then fine. Fuck you all. I’m out of here.”
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 51
