The words of the captain bounded around my head; ‘Due to arriving at Downing Street, you left us no choice, Ms. Martin’ and ‘The people need answers. You can give them peace of mind’.
The leaves squelched underfoot as we travelled through the woods to the helicopter, and the cold air nipped at my face and hands, permeating my clothes and leeching any heat from my body. Yet nothing felt real, as if I played the part in a dream, with no control over the outcome.
The government were going to use me to spin another lie, all to cover up the Siis and the Fae. A noble lie they called it, designed to protect the people. They were leaving me no choice. If I complied, the Damiq would be left alone. If I didn’t… well, he hadn’t spelt it out, but the silent threat had been clear; the Damiq would lose any protection they had and would become fair game in the war fought in secret.
Not that I could tell Nicolai that. He would claim it wasn’t worth putting myself at risk. That they would survive, and I shouldn’t make deals with the government. That the prophecy remained too important.
Maria leant in close, her shoulder bumping against mine as we broke through the trees into a clearing. ‘This is fab news, exactly what we wanted.’
I glanced at the nearest soldier to make sure he couldn’t hear. ‘How do you figure that?’
‘We wanted to go public and now we can. Once you are in front of the cameras, you can tell the world.’ She laughed causing a soldier to glance over. ‘What can he do if you are stood with him when you spill your guts?’ This time, she choked on her laughter. ‘It couldn’t be better if I’d planned it this way. He will validate you first.’
I hushed her when the nearest soldier gave us a narrow-eyed stare. ‘I will do exactly what they ask.’ I braced, ready for her accusing disappointment.
She stopped with a scowl, her eyes dark with irritation. ‘You aren’t going to take advantage of it?’ All she needed were her hands on her hips, and she would have the pouty teenager down to a tee.
I grabbed her arm and pulled, continuing towards the helicopter in the middle of the field. ‘Not if I want to save the Damiq.’
She continued to glare at me but said nothing more. I would need to keep an eye on her when we got there. The last thing I needed was Maria showing the world who she was. It wasn’t time. Maybe it would never be time. Maybe the man on the phone had been right, and the truth would cause mass panic, taking more lives than the Siis and Fae already did. What I did know was that, last time I planned to tell the world, I manipulated a good man’s mind, an innocent toddler was taken by the Fae—beings I despised but acted so much like, and people had died. I had screwed up, and everyone had sat back and watched me do it. Adam had decided to teach me a lesson, and what better way to do it that letting me suffer the consequences of colossal failure. Everything had become so complicated, and I had no idea about the right thing to do.
The soldier told us to keep our heads low to climb into the helicopter. Maria hesitated but followed as I strapped myself in. Any chance of escape was gone. Cold air battered against me as the aircraft rose, making it impossible to speak, not that we had anything left to say. All we could do was pray that the man on the phone had spoken the truth. At least they hadn’t taken my dagger from me.
The journey left me plenty of time to consider the worst-case scenario, that their words were false promises used to get me back in London. I tried to talk to Maria about it, but the thundering engine dominated the small compartment, making it impossible to hear anything, and I gave up trying. I sat with my hands pressed between my legs for warmth, trying to figure out what they were up to. If only Adam and Eris hadn’t left, especially Eris; it was her who had gotten me into this trouble.
To my utter surprise, my eyes became heavy, and I dozed as we sped over fields, buildings, and then the city. By the time we landed, my head felt clouded, and my eyes itched with tiredness.
I almost fell out of the helicopter and stumbled under the still spinning blades. I stopped to stretch some life into my tired body, but a suited man flapped his arms at me, urging me to hurry.
‘I’m Tabert.’ He beckoned us through a door into the large building we had landed on.
Maria grinned at my sour expression, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling.
Tabert led us down a long, beige corridor, and into a lift with quiet music playing, the sort of music that is meant to calm but grates the nerves until you want to find and smash the speaker. Four suited men followed. They didn’t wear a uniform, and I saw no tell-tale bulge under their well-tailored suit, but I bet they carried a concealed weapon.
The doors closed and Tabert handed me a file. His nose wrinkled in disgust before his face became passive. ‘When we arrive at Downing Street, you will meet with the Prime Minister for the press conference. Everything you need to know is in that file. Do not deviate from the statement. Do not embellish on the statement. Stick to the facts and only the facts.’
I couldn’t remember the last time I'd had a bath. In the woods and helicopter, the smell had been diluted. But in the small confines of the lift, the sharp scent stung my nose. Maria and I reeked, and our clothes hadn’t fared so well either.
Maria took the file from my still frozen hands and flicked through it. She snorted with laughter. ‘There isn’t one fact in here.’
I looked over her arm at the typed words and pulled the file from her hands, sure I read it wrong. I scanned through it twice. Had I not been so tired and drained, I would have laughed at the absurdity.
The lift opened into an underground garage, and Tabert marched into the carpark. Maria and I hurried after him with the four men following us.
Once seated in a sleek, black vehicle, I held the file up, waving it at Tabert. ‘They will not believe this.’ I opened the file and jabbed the first page. ‘Firstly, why is Nathan in here? He is nothing to do with the Siis.’
‘You killed him, Ms. Martin. The press will never believe that it isn’t related to the death of his partner.’
I slammed the file closed. ‘But the Prime Minister said he would explain my innocence; prove that I didn’t kill him.’
Tabert sighed, yet his face remained stoic, giving little away. ‘There is video footage of Detective Creed's murder. We may believe your innocence’—lie!—‘but the public will not.’
I glared at him, my teeth grinding together as I fought the urge to whack him over the head. They were rewriting the last few months as if they never happened. If I did this, I would never be able to get justice for what they had done to me. I will have lied to the world, bent to their will without a fight. I tried to let the anger go, it wasn’t as if they would ever be held accountable, but the folder of tightly spun lies swept away the last of my hope that they would pay for their crimes, against me and the Damiq.
Maria snatched the file from my hands and flicked through it. ‘Let me get this straight.’ She scanned the pages for a few seconds. ‘Nathan and Creed were involved in the plot to kill the Chancellor of the Exchequer?’
Tabert nodded, his expression bland. The man was good, not giving anything away with his eyes.
‘And Nathan confessed all of this to Ana when he tried to kill her?’ Maria raised an eyebrow in question.
Tabert nodded again. ‘That is correct.’
She shook her head, unable to digest the words coming from his mouth. ‘Hold on a minute. Even if we get past the fact that he confessed the whole plot like some cheesy villain in a movie, why would Ana kill Creed?’
Tabert sighed as he turned the page and pointed halfway down the paper. ‘Ms. Martin became aware of Detective Creeds plan to set off a biological weapon.’
Maria frowned, the question bright in both our minds: who in their right mind would believe the fabricated story laid out before us? ‘So why didn’t she go to the police?’ A small smile tugged the corners of her lips, showing her bafflement with the story.
‘Detective Creed’s involvement made it impossible to know who to trust.’
‘So, she stabbed him? In public?’
Tabert nodded. ‘At the time, Detective Creed was carrying a biological weapon which he planned to release into the public.’
Maria hadn’t finished picking holes in their supposedly noble lie. As if they had a noble bone in their body. ‘So, if she was saving people, why run away after she killed him?’
Tabert’s face remained passive, yet I got the sense of him rolling his eyes. ‘It is all in the file. When Ms. Martin killed the detective, she suffered a psychotic break which produced extreme paranoia, fuelled by the bi-polar she suffers from. This forced her into hiding, afraid that the other members of the cell would find her.’
I rubbed my hands down my face, sure I would wake up at any moment. ‘People won’t believe this. Why would Nathan want to kill the Chancellor?’
Tabert sighed. We were trying his patience—a score to us. ‘It was part of an elaborate plot to take down the government. The Prime Minister was their next target.’
I closed the file and handed it to him. ‘And that’s why the Prime Minister wants to publicly thank me?’
‘Be under no impression that the Prime Minister wants to do any of this. He strongly objects. His hand was forced when you entered the front door of Number Ten.’
Maria slumped in her seat with her feet splayed out. ‘Convenient that the Chancellor has been integrated into the story.’
‘The people need answers, Miss Gibbons. This gives them peace of mind.’
‘And covers your backsides,’ I said. ‘God forbid they find out the truth about the Siis.’
Maria leant towards Tabert. ‘Who really killed the Chancellor?’
‘Detective Creed.’
‘Come on now, tell us the truth.’
I made a mental note to fill Maria in on what Eris had said about the Chancellor’s death. She had been right. How convenient that the daku vein had been captured soon after the man’s murder.
‘As of this moment,’ Tabert continued, ‘that is the truth.’
‘People won’t believe it,’ I said.
He smiled, patronising me. ‘People will believe anything if you give the story enough meat.’
Maria pointed at the file. ‘Looking at that, we have a banquet.’
Tabert turned the air conditioning on, not able to stand the stench a minute longer. ‘My point exactly.’
I shivered as cold air rushed over me. It did nothing to remove the smell. If anything, it merely helped fan it around the car. ‘Hold on a minute.’ I saw a flaw in his pan. ‘Doesn’t this make the police look bad?’
Tabert shrugged. ‘From what I understand, Detective Creed was under investigation from the IPCC. By all accounts, his career was ending soon, anyway.’
I looked at him blankly. ‘IPCC?’
‘Independent Police Complaints Commission.’
Maria stretched, got a whiff of her own armpits and grimaced. ‘It sounds like you have it all worked out and tied up with a nice, pretty bow.’
‘It depends on your perspective.’ Tabert met my eyes. ‘Remember this, Ms. Martin. You are being given a gift, but if you abuse it, it will be taken into custody.’
Maria leant forward with her eyes narrow, ready to protest the threat.
I rested my hands on her shoulder, pressing her back before she did something stupid. ‘I merely want to be left alone.’
Tabert nodded as if avoiding each other was also high on his to-do list. ‘Then there will be no problem.’
I thought to mention that I had been promised this before, but let it go, too tired to fight a battle I had already lost. Maria opened her mouth to argue but closed it with a pout and leant back in the seat with her arms crossed and a dark scowl distorting her young features.
The car stopped in traffic. I watch the people through the tinted window. If only they knew of the war raging around them. They all rushed around, worrying about their daily concerns, whether they had enough money to pay the rent, whether they will get that raise at work, or whether their child will do well in school. Their concerns were big to them, and there had been a time I would have worried about the same mundane things. Life had been so simple back then.
A woman pushing a pram stopped to tuck a yellow blanket around her wailing baby. Purple smudges darkened her swollen eyes, her face pinched with tiredness. How would she react if she knew the danger threatening her child? Would she panic like the Prime Minister believed she would? Even if she did, would she not learn to survive with that knowledge? Eventually be grateful that she was better equipped to deal with the horror that could befall her and her loved ones?
The car moved forwards, leaving the woman stood on the roadside. Maybe I should use this opportunity to tell the world. I would have what I’d wanted, a captive media audience. But what if it didn’t work? What if it turned people against each other? I leant my head back on the seat, closed my eyes, and sighed. I had no idea of the right course of action, and right now, tiredness made it impossible to care. Every inch of my body hurt, and my brain ached with all the possibilities. How could I ever work out how people would act when I couldn’t get my own head straight? When my waking hours were plagued with as many bad dreams as when asleep? Even now, I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing Seraphine, her face twisted in a rage-filled snarl. And when my brain got bored with that, it moved onto my time with the soldiers, or I saw the faces of those I had lost.
Maria nudged me and whispered, ‘Are you all right?’
I nodded. ‘Why’d you ask?’
She touched my cheek, and her finger came away damp.
I rubbed my face with my sleeve. ‘I’m just tired.’
She nodded, accepting the excuse we both knew to be a lie. Now wasn’t the time to talk about the darkness consuming my mind. Maybe there would never be the time. We both felt the impending doom, the certainty that things were about to change for the worse.
The car stopped by a high, black, metal fence, guarded by a police officer, the back of Number Ten. He nodded to the driver as he let us through. Maria and I stumbled out of the car. The short journey had drained me, and I needed to drag myself after Tabert. Maria’s heavy eyes suggested she struggled just as much. We followed Tabert through a door, into a wide corridor.
‘This way,’ He led us through another door into a large room with high ceilings.
As he took us through Ten Downing Street, I tried to keep track of the route. After five doorways, two luxurious rooms, two of the most spacious corridors I'd ever seen, and a tiresome climb up a flight of stairs, I lost all sense of direction. My head buzzed with tiredness, ensuring that each thought caught for a mere moment before cloudy exhaustion smothered it, stealing it from my mind. My muscles ached as I struggled to keep up.
We entered a robin-egg blue room, and a woman stood to greet us, her blonde bun tied so tight, it stretched the skin from her aged eyes. She looked me up and down, and her nose wrinkled with disgust. ‘I will need longer than ten minutes with her.’
Tabert looked at his watch. ‘You have twenty, max.’
She sighed as she rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not a miracle worker.’
Tabert smiled with ease, speaking of a relationship that exceeded mere acquaintances who occasionally crossed paths. ‘We both know that’s not true.’ He paused in the doorway with a smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
The woman nodded and turned to us, ignoring Tabert as he left the room. The four suited and surely armed men stood against the wall, staring straight ahead. If anyone ever considered that they weren’t paying attention, they would be wrong. The mistake would likely cost them their lives.
The woman pointed to a white door on our left. ‘Go shower, quickly. I will get you clothes.’
I remained in place. ‘Who are you?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Paula. Now go wash. You heard Mister Tabert, time is short.’
‘What about me?’ Maria asked.
Paula looked her up and down, suppressing her disgust. ‘Who
are you?’
‘My friend,’ I said before Maria gave a tart reply. ‘We both need a wash.’
Paula went to say something but instead shook her head, not caring. ‘Fine. I will find something for you.’ She shoved me towards the door. ‘Everything you need is in there. I will have clothes for you both when you finish.’ She opened the door and pushed me in.
For a moment, I could do nothing but stare.
‘Wow!’ Maria shouldered past me and turned on the spot, taking the whole room in.
The bathroom stretched before us, all beige, white and chrome with a large shower at the end and a sink to our left. Laden shelves sat to our right, filled with towels and toiletries.
‘Hurry,’ Paula said. ‘Time is short.’ She closed the door, blocking out all sound.
Maria stared at the far side of the room, her mouth agape. ‘A hot shower.’ She grinned. ‘It almost makes the deception worth it.’ She took a moment to study the toiletries to our right before selecting two pink bottles. She flapped her arms at me. ‘Hurry up, then. You need to go first.’
I grabbed a flannel and the toiletries needed, not caring about the scent. I wanted a shower, to scrub all the crusted dirt from my body. I stifled a sob, born from simple, unexpected joy and stepped into the shower with my dagger, needing it closer than ever to ease my fear. I dropped it to the floor, flinching a little when it cracked the tile below. Oops! That would be expensive.
After a few seconds of fiddling with the shower controls, hot powerful streams of water beat down on my sore, aching skin, I moaned with pleasure as I stood still, letting the water wash away the dirt, taking some of the tension with it.
It felt like seconds before someone knocked on the door. The shower curtain stirred as the door opened. ‘We need you out now,’ Paula said before closing the door again.
I inhaled, filling my lungs, enjoying the massage from the water before I tipped shampoo onto my hair. I struggled to feel urgency under the powerful jet of hot water, but I didn’t want the suited men coming in for me.
Noble Lies Page 13
