Metal Guardian: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 2)

by A. L. Knorr

  The question struck me as odd. The answer was, “Of course, that is exactly what I concluded.”

  True, Jackie and I had changed, and she’d trained like mad in self-defence, while I grew more comfortable with my abilities, but I still wanted to bring my uncle to the UK and to pursue a career in archeology. I’d never considered a different path.

  “I guess I thought,” I paused, buying time to process and cobble my thoughts, “that the immediate crisis was over. Kezsarak was contained, and Winterthür was busy chasing Sark.”

  “Stupid, stupid girl,” Daria’s voice laughed acidly, her cheery affectation peeling off in strips. “You think the war can be with a single victory? Did you really think that Winterthür was remotely distracted by chasing an insect like Sark?”

  “If you’re so worried about the Group of Winterthür, why did you help them by helping Sark? The only thing I’m learning from this game is that I don’t know who you are at all.”

  The phone was silent for a moment, and when she finally spoke, Daria’s voice was infuriatingly calm and gentle.

  “My dear, I already told you who I am. My reasons are frighteningly, terribly, and ridiculously simple.”

  The way she said this made it clear that I was supposed to know what she was talking about. I wanted to scream, to demand that she explain herself, but Daria seemed determined to “teach me”. I had to choose: smash the phone or play along.

  “Fine,” I spat as I began to pace. “You said you weren’t a good guy and that you are an independent contractor. I understand that means you work for money, but what Sark says you did has nothing to do with money. He was on the run from the law and Winterthür, and you gave him something to get him back in their good graces. Gave, Daria, not sold. So, what am I supposed to take from that? There was some other kind of payment? You got something else out of this besides a chance to be a world-class bitch?”

  A throaty chuckle––pleased, not mocking––told me I was making progress.

  “Better late than never I suppose,” she purred. “Do you want to take a shot at the next level? You’ve got the time.”

  The last little comment about time snagged me, but I didn’t want to lose momentum.

  “You wanted the Group of Winterthür to have the key and Sark to be the one to give it to them,” I continued. “You knew they had the location of Ninurta’s tomb. Maybe, you hoped they’d lead you to the Barrow of the Heavens. There was something you wanted in there?”

  “You’re not half so bad at this as I thought. It was just a question of motivation, not ability.”

  Cutlery rattled in the kitchen at my agitation. I took a deep breath and stilled them with a thought.

  “But just because we’re friends,” she said, “I’ll tell you it wasn’t something but someone.”

  “Someone? The only person in there was Ninurta. You wanted to get to Ninurta? Why? What do you w—”

  “Times up,” Daria announced. “Ibby, it’s been lovely, but I’m afraid you are going to have company before long, and you need to talk to Lowe. Give him my love, and just so you get the chance to tell him, I need you to take this very seriously: get everyone the hell out of that flat. Now!”

  The line went dead, and I stared at the phone for half a heartbeat and then dismantled it with fumbling fingers. As I pried the case off, I shouted so I was sure that Jackie would hear me loud and clear.

  “Real McCoy! Jackie, we’ve got a REAL McCOY!”

  ---

  The Real McCoys was a euro-dance and pop group out of Germany that had some hits when Jackie and I were still in nappies. When we hit our tweens, we discovered separately and each of us came to love them. One of their biggest hits was a song called “Run Away” whose synthesized, electropop beat combined with brutally repetitive lyrics had been the beginning and end of our infatuation. When we finally met at university, we laughed and bonded over the song. When we moved into the new flat, we’d decided we needed some code words and phrases. Remembering the ill-fated “Run Away” jam, we’d decided that Real McCoy was the code for our escape plan.

  ---

  My shout had hardly finished echoing down the hall before Sark and Uncle Iry burst out of the hallway, Jackie herding them forward with hand and baton. Sark’s foot caught on the rug, and he struggled to stay upright. Uncle Iry took him by the ears to brace him, his eyes darting between Jackie and me.

  “Is McCoy a person?” he asked, but Jackie was already racing back into our rooms to grab our emergency bags, while I moved to Sark.

  “People are coming,” I told him, reading his expression even as my will insinuated itself into the copper manacles around his wrists. “We are leaving. If you come with us, you do exactly what I or Jackie say, when we say it, got it?”

  Sark stiffened at the mention of our impending visitors, but he met my eyes and nodded. He cringed as the copper responded to my instructions, slithering from his wrists, up his arms, over his shoulders, and down his torso. The metal stopped once it separated into thin hoops around each leg. I held a finger in front of his face, my lips pursing into a grim line.

  “One time,” I hissed. “You disobey once, you argue once, you drag your heels once, and those hoops tighten together. Bones break, bollocks burst, and no matter what, we leave you to those coming after us.”

  “Understood,” Sark nodded hands raised in surrender and then added defensively, “I came to you for help, remember?”

  “We’ll see.” I turned to Uncle Iry who was still bracing Sark. “Sorry, Uncle, but it’s not safe, and we need to go now. You are going to have to trust me.”

  Uncle Iry let go of Sark and looked around, trying to make sense of the rapidly evolving events. After a second’s consideration, he nodded. “Good thing I didn’t unpack.”

  ---

  We were out of the building in under five minutes.

  The rear exit opened to a little plaza, which was thankfully empty. With Jackie leading the way out, whoever might have been loitering there was liable to be bulldozed. The late morning sun was still climbing, and the air was crisp. A strong breeze cut contemptuously through my thin coat. Jackie didn’t seem to mind, while Sark seemed too preoccupied with watching for threats to notice. Uncle Iry, though, his body acclimated to the temperature of Sudan, hunched inward, his wide bony shoulders folded nearly in half.

  Heads down, moving as quickly as possible without actually running, I hoped we looked like travellers trying to make up for lost time. At least that would explain the bags we were hauling.

  We headed for Covent Garden Station, but not directly. The quickest route would be to walk directly from our flat, but the Real McCoy plan said we needed to make sure we weren’t being followed. So we’d hoof it to St. Paul’s Station, ride Central up to Holborn, then switch to Piccadilly and take that to Covent Garden. From Covent Garden, we had less … conventional transportation.

  We tried to stay out of the open as much as possible, taking side streets and narrow lanes. Jackie and I had plotted this out and walked it together until imprinted in our memories. My head moved continuously on a swivel, scanning for enemies.

  At my side, stoically lugging his suitcase, Uncle Iry put one foot in front of the other, but I could sense unease rolling off him in waves. My conscience needled me with pangs of guilt, but the need to keep moving to survive took priority. He might have come to a place that didn’t seem much better than the oil fields of Sudan, but at least we were together. A low, simmering anger burned off the worst of the guilt as I thought of the utter devastation I would level against anyone who even got close to threatening him.

  We were halfway down the alley that would take us to the street with St Paul’s when a hoarse voice barked behind us.

  “Stop! Police!” Two uniformed officers trotted down the alley after us.

  “Run, talk, or fight?” I asked Jackie quietly.

  The decision was taken out of our hands when two more officers appeared at the other end of the alley and advanced. Ins
tinctively we pressed a little closer together.

  “Talk, then fight.”

  Sark’s head was down, his expression unreadable beneath his mop of damp hair. Uncle Iry was doing his best to stay calm, but I could see his nostrils flaring as he struggled to control his breathing. Another pang of guilt jabbed at me, but I shoved it away angrily. I needed to think, not feel bad.

  “‘Morning officers,” I called. “We’re very sorry, but we need to get to the station before we miss—”

  “Not going to happen,” the hoarse-throated man announced as he drew closer. He was tautly muscled and red-faced, with glaring, watery eyes and a cruel twist to his thin lips.

  “Are we being detained?” I feigned shock even as my metallic sense swept the alley and the officers. I sensed plenty of metallic piping on the buildings around us and high voltage electric cabling in the walls. What I didn’t sense was metal on the officers. I didn’t expect an average police officer to be armed with a weapon or concentrated source of metal such as a gun or a Taser, but I didn’t sense zippers or buttons on their clothes or clasps on the custodian helmets. Alarm bells rang in my mind.

  Unless the Metro Police had changed their uniform policy, things were not adding up.

  “I know Constable Chambers,” I began, trying to sound confident. “If you’d just call him—”

  The two who’d approached from behind us were less than four strides away, and the ones from the other end of the alley were even closer.

  “You can talk to him yourself once we’re down at the station,” the spokesman of the group interrupted gruffly. “But I don’t imagine he’ll appreciate you throwing his name around like that, miss.”

  Jackie and I dropped our bags and nodded.

  “I’d think PC Chambers would be more upset that we forgot she was a woman.” Jackie shrugged, then her baton flicked out, and she launched herself at the nearest of the fake officers.

  Their leader snarled, but it was cut short as I raked my hands through the air and sent two pipes sweeping down to smash him and his companion against the walls of the alley. Both men struck the brick with teeth-rattling impacts and slumped to the ground.

  I spun and saw Jackie fending off two attackers, both armed with billy clubs––not metal, unfortunately. Several lashings of her baton and some clever footwork had the two men getting in each other’s way. One lost his footing after colliding with his mate, while the other made a wild swing at Jackie. The attack was strong but slow, and Jackie bobbed back to let it whistle by before launching a blow at the man’s exposed back. He fell to a knee, but the return swing across his jaw sent him spinning to the ground.

  Jackie had no time to savour the victory as the other man climbed to his feet. In a snarling rush, he shoulder checked her against the wall. Jackie was no petite dewdrop, but he outsized her by at least two stone, and she hit the wall hard enough that I screamed. Jackie bounced off the wall and fell to her hands and knees, stunned. I reached for more pipes to punish her attacker when a sharp crack echoed through the alley. The man seized up, his whole body twisting in on itself, before collapsing to the ground to shudder and twitch.

  A thick braid of copper wire, still snapping and buzzing with deadly electrical current, jutted from a small breach in the brick wall. It held there rigid and hissing for a second before slithering back into the wall, leaving our path clear. Sark removed his hand from the brick wall a few strides from where Jackie was now climbing to her feet.

  Jackie looked at the man trembling on the ground, then looked at me. I shook my head and she turned and looked at Sark. He was back to hiding his face behind his lank, choppy hair.

  “We should go,” he grunted, pointing towards St Paul’s.

  Chapter Nine

  Midday traffic shuffled around us as we got off the train in Covent Garden Station. Striving to stay close together and trying not to look like fugitives, we clambered onto the platform with our bags. A quizzical look here and there set my teeth on edge, but no transit staff tried to stop us. I took that as a win and led the way to the abandoned end of the platform.

  “We are taking another train?” Uncle Iry asked looking around.

  “A special train,” I said, waiting for the signal that indicated my presence had called our transportation.

  The sharp, gusty wail of a steam engine’s whistle sounded, and the hustle and murmur of the station died away. We had side-stepped the normal world of London into that space where phantasmal beings dwelt. I wasn’t sure how the magic of summoning the station’s train worked exactly, but I was glad to see every member of our company still there. I hadn’t wanted to contend with the prospect of Uncle Iry or Sark not being included.

  “What’s happening?” Sark said, his eyes darting around, searching for the crowds who’d filled the station only moments ago.

  “We are going to the British Museum Station.” I nodded down the track towards the sound of a chugging engine. Another hearty whistle sounded and an opaque, yet strangely two-dimensional mist spilled from the tunnel.

  “But that place was shut down long ago. It’s just a ruin.” A tremor crept into Sark’s voice as he watched the flat sheets of ghost-steam peel away to reveal the antique steam engine churning its way towards us.

  “If you’d like, you can stay here,” Jackie offered coolly, shouldering her duffel. “In fact, if you are on the fence, just stay here as a favour to me.”

  Sark ignored her, watching the train roll up to the platform with huge eyes.

  The steam engine slid to a squealing stop and settled with a long hiss. Sark’s amazed stare became almost eager as the doors––quaint portals of wood panelling and plate glass––folded open to welcome us.

  Jackie climbed on first, followed by Sark, who drank in every detail.

  “This does not look like most of the trains I’ve seen in London,” Uncle Iry observed, then looked down the barren platform. “And what has happened to all the people?”

  “They haven’t gone anywhere, a’am, we have,” I said, doing my best to explain. “We are going to a kind of ghost station, a place outside of the normal world. It will be safe, a hiding place where we can see a friend of mine who will help. We just need to take the ghost train.”

  Uncle Iry baulked and looked at the train, and for the first time, I saw real fear in his face.

  “When I was young my jida, your jida eazima, great-grandmother, used to tell stories of a cart pulled by a bouda, a witch, who would scoop up children and take them to the places of the dead.”

  He swallowed and wiped a hand over his face. I stepped close to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Some,” he continued, “it would devour and give their bones to the ghuls.” Shame and guilt etched into the lines of his face. “When I look at this ghost train, Ibby, all I can think of is those stories.”

  I nodded, understanding although I’d never been subjected to my great grandmother’s storytelling. Uncle Iry had needed to absorb so much in the short time he had been in the UK. It was only natural that he’d start to fray at the edges, God knows I’d been there more than once last year.

  But we were so close now, so close to safety.

  I took his hand, gently squeezing.

  “Please trust me, a’am,” I said softly, looking earnestly into his face. “Just a little farther now, and we will be safe.”

  Uncle Iry looked once more at the train, then back to me. With a sigh, he returned the affectionate pressure of my grip and nodded.

  We stepped into the car and settled on seats next to Jackie and Sark. With another toot of the steam whistle, the doors closed, and we trundled into the darkness.

  ---

  “Ibby Bashir,” Professor James Lowe shouted from the top of the spiral stairs that led up to the commons. “Quite the company you’ve brought today. If I’d known we were giving a tour, I might have cleaned up a bit.”

  He was being absurd. As a condensation of psychic energy and ectoplasm bound by very old, very powerfu
l, memories, the ghost-station didn’t require cleaning or maintenance. It remained a perfect replica of the British Museum Station of 1900.

  “Things have gotten interesting in the world of the living, Professor,” I called up to him, our feet ringing on the ironwork stairs. “We’ve got a lot of news, and not a bit of it good, I’m afraid.”

  “When is it ever?” Lowe replied. “But you might as well make yourselves at home. Judging from your bags, you seem to have something like that in mind.”

  I frowned as I reached the top of the stairs. That was a bit gloomy for Lowe, who was typically optimistic. Remarkably so, given that he had been dead for almost a century. Over the past year, he had shared his knowledge about the Inconquo and guided me in using my new-found powers. He’d also been trying to learn more about our trapped demon––Kezsarak.

  “Two new faces,” Lowe said, “but one of them I’m quite sure I already know.”

  Lowe stepped towards Uncle Iry and held out a pale, long-fingered hand. “Welcome, Master Irshad Bashir,” Lowe said, smiling warmly. “I am Professor James Lowe. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  Uncle Iry took the proffered hand and managed to hide a wince as he smiled back. Shaking a hand with a ghost is a chilly business.

  “Pleased to meet you, sir.” Iry had a wide-eyed look around. “Your ... er, home, is very impressive.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t take an ounce of credit for the ol’ mausoleum.” Lowe sighed, looking around with what could generously be called a weary eye.

  “But it is good to see fresh faces,” Lowe said, some pluck back in his demeanour. “Not that your lovely niece hasn’t brightened the place when she manages to find the time. So busy this one, with this and with that. The heroine has no time but for saving the world.”

  He shot me a mockingly severe glance. Uncle Iry and Lowe shared a chuckle.

  I huffed, balling a fist on an outthrust hip as I looked at my uncle and the ghost in their sudden camraderie. “One minute together and already taking the mickey.”