by Roy Gill
“‘That would be difficult,’ he says. ‘A vital part of the January Express has been stolen. It will be a little time before the train runs again.’
“‘Stolen? You just let them take it!’ I shouted. ‘You didn’t even try to fight back!’
“His other face gives me this crafty look and says, ‘Be calm, my stout little wolf-heart. The time for action will come. For now, you have the Omniclavis – the all-key. I suggest you use it to unlock the mystery.’
“Then he waves his hand like he’s ordering another drink and this trapdoor opens up under me. ‘Ciao,’ he says, ‘or should I say, see you later?’, and before I know it, I’m flat on my face in the snow beneath the train…”
Eve sniggered but Morgan pressed on.
“I was deep in pack territory, and it wasn’t long before I got picked up by a patrol. Had to go and do a bit of bowing and scraping. Let the old girl re-assert her status as Top Dog. Made me listen to a long boring speech about duty. She wasn’t pleased I’d bargained away that manky bone debt. Turns out she thought I only had it on a loan.” Morgan grinned lopsidedly. “More fool her.”
“Woah, woah,” said Cameron. “Back up. Who’s the ‘old girl’ and why does she get the bowing and the scraping?”
“Yeah, well.” Morgan rubbed the back of his head and looked bashful. “She’s my mum, isn’t she? She’s sort of pack leader. Like the, um, Wolf Queen.”
Cameron and Eve stared at him. Morgan shrugged. “Told you she was fierce. She thinks she owns me – just like all the other Were-kind on the Edinburgh Parallel. I mean, by tradition it’s her hubby who leads, as he’s the Alpha Male. But everyone knows she’s the real power.”
“How very progressive,” said Eve lightly.
“I don’t make the stupid rules, do I? If I was interested in pack politics I’d still be there, making out like I was the dutiful son and heir. Ha! Like I’d want that!” Morgan snorted and scratched the side of his face. “That’s not the worst of it though. Turns out the Brain-Dead Biker blabbed. Grant gave her the full download on Cam-boy and now she wants to meet him.”
“What’s the problem with that?” said Eve. “Cameron can be very charming when he wants to be. I’m sure he’ll win them over…”
“Don’t you get it?” Morgan looked exasperated. “Lone wolves aren’t tolerated. The pack doesn’t want any randoms who could act out – shifting and rampaging about – getting the humans to notice we exist. And if Cam can shift at will – even in the Human World – that’s something new and risky. They’re not gonna like it.”
“Oh dear.” Eve waved a finger at Cameron. “Morgan’s mum won’t like you. Whatever will you do?”
Now it was Eve’s turn to be stared at by the two boys. “Oh your faces! Bother the stupid wolves. Are we not forgetting one tiny thing? We won! We won the case.” She did a little step and dance on the spot. “We beat Grey and Black. We saw them off! And we get to keep the shop now. Of course, it’s all due to my brilliance, you two shouldn’t get any credit.”
Cameron started to smile. “She’s right, you know. Rude but right. We won because of Eve and her mad disguise. Although it’s a bit down to that vamp judge as well… Why the Parallel did he think we were related?”
“I dunno. I could buy it.” Morgan said, glancing from Cameron to Eve. He ducked from a playfully swung fist. “Ow! Get off! What are you hitting me for?”
“Because that’s the worst thing you’ve ever said,” said Cameron. “Still it was a genius idea of Eve’s. How did you think of it?”
Eve glowed with pleasure. “Remember we told your friend Amy we were cousins? She totally bought it. I do look a tiny bit like you. And I had an old photo of your gran to copy from. It wasn’t so difficult, once I found the wig and clothes.”
“You did the voice as well,” said Cameron, “and the attitude. I really thought she was back.”
Eve ran a hand through her hair, smoothing it out. “I’ve spent the past year playing the grown-up and sort of standing in for her. It wasn’t too much of a stretch.”
Cameron shook his head. “I can’t believe you got away with it.”
“A disbelief I share.”
They turned to see Dr Black watching them from the shadows. He seemed to have calmed right down since he was hauled out of the pit ranting and raving, but it was clear he was not at all happy. “The girl’s disguise was pure pantomime, but the blood-type duplication… that must’ve taken planning. I wouldn’t have thought you had the skills.”
Eve gave a tight smile, admitting nothing. “You shouldn’t underestimate us.”
“A fair point,” said Dr Black mildly. “It’s not a mistake I’ll make again.”
“Are you looking for your fat friend?” said Cameron. “Because he’s still swinging around in the Court. I suppose it’s too much to hope he’s stuck down there.”
Dr Black’s mouth twitched and his eyes went dead for a second. “Mr Grey doesn’t get stuck anywhere. He’ll find a way to leech himself out. He always does.”
“What is it with you and him?” Cameron persisted. “Because if he’s got some kind of hold over you, tell us. We don’t have to be enemies. We could help.”
“Hold? On me? Don’t be ridiculous… I’ve a first-class mind. As if some cellar daemon could…”
“You should listen to him,” Eve added. “Believe me, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to have a daemon wedged inside your head. I know what it can do.”
Black’s expression hardened. “There’s no hold. Grey works for me.” He pulled his mobile out his pocket and stabbed at the screen. “This isn’t over. Using the Court was only one option. Don’t think I’m beaten.”
“I don’t get it,” said Cameron. “Why are you doing this? Why don’t you let it go? Do you hate us so much?”
“Hate you?” Black’s eyebrow raised. “You’re an irrelevance. Merely something in the way of a greater experiment.” Holding his glowing phone aloft, he stalked away into the gloomy corridors.
“Nothing about that guy makes sense,” Cameron muttered. “What experiment? What’s he after, really?”
“We should follow and find out.” Morgan rubbed a palm against his fist. “I reckon it’s time we went on the offensive.”
“Yes, all very butch,” said Eve. “But we haven’t got a lamp to guide us. He could be heading anywhere. This building’s like a maze.”
“Lamp, she says. What do we need a lamp for?” Morgan tapped his nose. “Best tracker in town, this. Come on. Follow me!”
CHAPTER 10
The World Engine
They moved through the Court, Morgan scenting Black’s progress. Here and there they saw signs of the Greys’ attack on the winch room, and their subsequent retreat: doors hung off their hinges and Weir lamps lay smashed and guttering. A sullen bull daemon pushed past, grunting and rubbing at a broken-off horn, and every so often they encountered a space where something was simply missing.
“Gobbled by the Greys?” said Eve, and Cameron nodded.
The absences chafed, like grit in a shoe. He could feel his wolf-side was restless, stirring somewhere at the back of his mind, uttering frustrated little whines and snarls.
Not now. Not yet…
He clenched his fists then glanced down, thinking another subconscious shift might be on the way. He caught Eve watching, and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“You’d let me know if there was a problem, right? With the wolf?” Eve spoke quietly while Morgan sniffed on ahead. “Because I worry about you, you know.”
“You worry about me?” Cameron remembered the little girl he’d first encountered under the thrall of the daemonic Mrs Ferguson. She’d been resourceful, but scared and brittle as well. She’d changed so much in the past year. “Are you sure that’s the right way round?”
“Sometimes it is,” she said, and gave his arm a squeeze.
“Hush up,” said Morgan. “This is where the trail stops.”
At the end of a du
sty corridor stood a frosted-glass door, the darkened panel showing no signs of activity within.
Painted lettering in a gothic font read:
HOGG & STEVENSON – BARRISTERS AT LAW
DECEASED & GREY
‘& Grey’ had been appended below in a modern style, and ‘DECEASED’ added in block capitals beneath the name of Hogg.
“Looks like the right place.” Cameron tested the handle. “But I guess we stop here too – unless we can force it?”
“Forgetting something?” Morgan dangled a brass key in front of Cameron’s nose. “We’ve got an Access All Areas pass, courtesy of a certain two-faced deity.”
Eve snatched it smartly. “I get first shot.” As the key neared the door, its metal prongs stretched and reshaped. It slid gracefully into the lock and turned with a satisfying click.
“That was underwhelming,” she said. “I was hoping for sparkles.”
“Never mind the special effects.” Cameron pushed the door, which opened smoothly. “It worked.”
Beyond lay a cluttered office. Three high stools stood behind tall desks. On the wall, a portrait of a lugubrious boar daemon in a lawyer’s wig and robes radiated disapproval over the room.
“The late Mr Hogg, I presume,” said Eve, studying the portrait. “Do you think Grey gobbled him too?”
“Absorbed, more like. I wonder if that’s how he got to be a lawyer?” Eve slanted Cameron a glance and he continued, “You know that answer machine the lump ate? It started speaking with clicks and gurgles afterwards, like it had sort of taken on part of the machine.”
“Interesting. I wonder what Grey’s absorbed from Black? What kind of doctor is Black, anyway?” She stuck out her tongue and pulled a face. “I wouldn’t go see him. He’d probably prescribe acid.”
“I don’t think he’s a medic. I think he’s a scientist. He said something about us being in the way of his ‘great experiment’.”
“If you two have finished playing the Dynamic Detective Duo, you’d better get over here.” Morgan gestured to a door in the far wall. “And keep it down. I can hear ’em talking.”
Cameron hurried over. “Hold up before you use the Omniclavis. It only works three times –”
“I know! I can count!” Morgan turned the handle. “No need. It’s open.”
The door gave onto the upper balcony of a private library. They crept through, staying hunkered to the ground, and beneath the level of the balustrade. On the level below, three deep wingchairs were arranged around a fireplace. Dr Black sat in the one facing towards them, his legs crossed, apparently engrossed in his phone.
“With you in a moment, Watt,” he addressed the chair opposite. “This message won’t send, and I’ve got the department on my back again. My reputation is riding on this. Can’t you get decent wifi down here?”
“We try, but the signal gets eaten. There is a species of daemonic metal beetle that finds radio waves irresistible.”
As Black’s companion spoke, a steady stream of smoke issued through the peak of a blackened-tin top hat, which was all that could be seen of the chair’s occupant. A rhythmic wheeze was heard, pitched somewhere between the mechanised breathing of a hospital ventilator and the chuffing of a resting steam engine.
“Yes, everything has a predator, I know,” said Black. “I respect that, even if it’s inconvenient. There’s a pleasing circularity to the equation.” He dropped his phone onto the arm of his chair.
“It is in the nature of flesh life,” his companion said. “And it holds true for metal life as well.”
“Metal life! I know all about metal life, and it’s unreliable,” said Black. “There’s always some bug in the system. Something to hold me back.”
“You know nothing. Your computers, your phones, your technologies are but pale imitations of what they could be; machines without souls. When the Makaris built me, they gave me life proper. It is to honour their memory that I do this work.”
The Makaris… Up on the balcony, Cameron shivered. The Makaris were an ancient daemon clan of engineers, supposed to be long extinct. Thanks to his gran’s ill-fated plans, he’d previously encountered two of the artefacts they’d left behind, and only just escaped with his life.
“Three years we’ve been working on the World Engine,” Dr Black jabbed a scornful finger at his companion. “Three years you’ve assured me it just needs one more part, one more adjustment, one more sacrifice – and then it’ll run. But still it doesn’t work. Well, I’m tired of waiting.”
“Your impatience is not required. It will not mend the machine.”
“Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“It’s a statement.” The regular chuffing, halting breath paced up. “The World Engine is old and complicated. The governor valve from the January Express has proved to be compatible, but still… there are problems.”
“Why won’t it go?” Black snarled. “Tell me!”
“It is as you suspected. The medium the Engine was built to work upon has changed. When the World Split forged the Parallel, it was a no place: a void, an inter-dimensional gap. That is what the Engine was designed for. For three hundred years the Engine has lain dormant, and during that time the Parallel has filled with activity and life…”
“That boy and his erratic friends.” Black got up, took a decanter of amber liquid from the mantelpiece and poured himself a drink. “They mingle. They move between. They cause chaos. Why can’t they just stay put?”
“By constantly crossing the boundaries they generate dimensional instability, so re-enforcing the Parallel’s existence. And so… the Engine will not run.”
Cameron exchanged a glance with Morgan. “Black wasn’t lying,” he hissed. “This isn’t about us. His plan covers the entire Parallel.”
Eve nudged him, “Look.”
With the sound of antiquated clockwork ticking into life, Black’s colleague rose from his chair. As he crossed the room, it became clear Watt’s entire body was as metallic as the steaming top-hat vent attached to his head. A curved tin plate covered his face, with rivets indicating eyebrows and moustache, a slit for a mouth and two orange lamps in place of eyes. Pistons articulated his arms and legs, and an inspection port set in his chest revealed a series of valves clustered around a padlock-shaped heart. The complex parts pumped furiously and glinted in the firelight.
“I will see if Grey has collected himself.” The mechanical man pulled a rope, causing a set of wooden shutters to concertina open. Beyond lay a dank rock wall that must have backed onto the Court pit. A network of pipes ran in through the wall from many directions, all heading to a voluminous glass collecting-jar. Glutinous grey liquid dripped through the pipes and a familiar sugary-mushroom stink seeped into the air.
Watt attached a rubber tube to the side of the flask and handed the mouthpiece to Black. “Did you hear that, Grey? The World Engine needs a void to work on. We must abandon the Court, and take direct action.”
“But of course, Sir. This is most gratifying. My wish is, as ever, to expand.” A bubbling, multiple voice responded, as if Grey’s crawling tones had been duplicated many times over. “My sub-forms are currently being collated and re-absorbed. New matter has been drawn in as well. I will shortly be ready to spore.”
A thick grey pustule pushed to the surface of the churning grey liquid.
“Such a world I’ve found, that has things like you in it.” Dr Black put a hand over his mouth, and for a minute looked decidedly queasy. “Sometimes I think I should’ve turned back when I had the chance.”
“Oh no, sir. Never say that,” the legion of voices wheedled. “Your experiment would be incomplete, the theory unproved, and you’d always wonder… No one would get to know the discoveries of the great Dr Alasdair Black.”
“Three hundred years the Engine has waited.” Watt’s valves chugged and pumped. “I will not let anything stand in the way of its glorious activation.”
Black drew out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “I made a d
eal with the devil when I took you on, Grey.”
“No, sir. Not the devil. Just a resourceful daemon,” the grey pustule at the top of the flask swelled, puffing out into a crude replica of Mr Grey’s face, “who yearns to do your bidding…”
Black shut his eyes, breathing heavily. “Very well. I give you permission. Spore and multiply. Go out into the Parallel. Empty it – and shut it down.”
CHAPTER 11
Night is Falling
Cameron, Morgan and Eve set up makeshift beds made from old blankets at the front of Scott & Forceworthy’s music shop. They wanted to be as far away from the dome-covered lump as possible. It was like having a spy in the building, Eve said, but, as Morgan pointed out, at least they knew where it was – and what it was up to.
“It’s either stay here with the lump,” Cameron had said, “or go back to the house with Weavers and whatever else might try to gatecrash…”
Faced with that choice, they had decided to spend an uncomfortable night on the floor. Each had taken it in turns to keep watch while the other two slept, but the lump had showed no signs of stirring.
The next morning, Cameron tentatively lifted the dome while Eve brandished a claymore she’d dug out the storeroom, and Morgan hefted a fire extinguisher. The lump appeared inactive: pale grey and wizened like an ancient mushroom.
“Perhaps it’s dead,” Eve said. “It was only a baby one. Just a lump of chin really.”
“Don’t go feeling sorry for it.” Morgan lowered the fire extinguisher. “It’s still part of Grey.”
She nodded and poked the lump with her sword. It parted around the sword’s tip, but the blade came out intact. “I think the energy’s gone out of it. If we wait a bit longer, we might be able to scrape it off the desk.” She gave an amused snort. “Like an enormous dried-out bogey.”
“I don’t even know what you mean,” said Cameron in a monotone.
