Ghost Electricity

by Sean Cunningham

  Fiona’s back hit the wall. Her shadow moved, pouring itself across the floor so it was between her and Alice. Alice saw it and stopped.

  “Careful,” Damon said, stepping forward. The light that wasn’t light intensified around him. It shone brighter in his chest, as if his heart drank it in, and brighter around the ring on his finger.

  “No Damon,” Alice said. “You’ll –”

  She bolted for the doorway. Gerald was there and he flattened himself against the wall, butlerish dignity abandoned. She heard cries from behind her as she raced down the stairs, felt the sharp focus of three predators turning on fleeing prey. The front door wrenched itself open before she even touched it.

  She was out into the night, unaware of the cold, running along the pavement towards the warm life of busy streets, her boots pounding on the pavement. She heard millions of people muttering about their lives. She felt lines of power criss-crossing the city around and beneath her.

  She reached a corner and in the moment before her blind panic might have ebbed, she crashed into someone.

  They spun apart, limbs tangling and untangling. Fiona saw a man in a suit with an old-fashioned pocket-watch in his hand. She also saw a bald skull, a face of bony ridges, and amber eyes. Everything she had seen in the vampires in Akin Tonno’s house was there, but magnified ten times.

  “What’s your name this time, girl?” he asked.

  Black arms shot up out of her shadow. The man-shaped thing she knew to be named Yadrim but only because he let her know, because he didn’t fear her grabbed the black arms by the wrists. At first he looked contemptuous, as though he’d expected them, but their strength appeared to surprise him and he shoved them away. He stepped back and crouched like a panther deciding whether or not to pounce.

  She turned around and kept running.

  Chapter 8 – Jacob, Wednesday

  Jacob Mandellan stood in the middle of the living room while a seer, a woman a good fifteen years his senior, knelt on the faded blue carpet and arranged slices of fruit and vegetables around his feet.

  He was in his early twenties, fair-haired and dressed in a lean, tailored suit that was out of place in the cluttered little living room. In his mind, Jacob was already adjusting the rest of his schedule for the day to compensate for this delay, while keeping a tight hold on his irritation.

  He slid his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers and considered the effect of citric acid on leather shoes. He didn’t know much about citric acid beyond that you could find it in oranges. He did know that Shivani had included oranges in the fruit basket’s worth of fresh produce being placed around him and he knew that his shoes were expensive.

  Shivani went back to the pile of apples, oranges, pears, carrots and broccoli that she had been dicing up ever since Jacob arrived. She returned with another double handful, shuffled further around him on her knees, and resumed creating her multi-coloured pattern.

  He started to think it was just a random pattern, like doodles on a sketchpad. If it had been inspired by the arcane, his own mystic senses would have twitched by now. Seeing the future wasn’t his thing, but he had enough talent and general education to know when it was happening right next to him.

  Jacob had come to see Shivani to find out why she hadn’t warned him Gregory Ferguson’s chaos cult was about to be butchered. He did not think the answer lay in broccoli.

  Shivani finished her pattern. She sat back on her heels and looked up at him with a bright smile. “It’s a sundial.”

  Jacob looked over his shoulder at his bodyguard, Miss Koh. “We’re done here.”

  “Please,” Shivani’s mother said as she scurried forward. She was a short, round woman on the other side of middle age who wore her grey hair braided back. “She is just having a bad day. Some days she is not here. That is all this is. She still has her sight.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Jacob said. He looked at Miss Koh, tilted his head towards the door and led the way out on the street. He chose not to hear the anguished pleas of Shivani’s mother. A few traces of fog curled away into the morning air as Jacob pulled the front yard gate open and started along the street towards his car.

  “Will we be in touch?” Miss Koh asked.

  “Of course not. She’s used up, useless to me. That happens to most of them eventually. Their personalities aren’t strong enough and they spend so much time wandering the future that one day a part of them doesn’t come back.”

  “There is no retirement plan then?”

  Jacob paused with his key in his hand. Miss Koh was from Taiwan or Singapore or somewhere like that. Before meeting her Jacob would have expected someone from her part of the world to behave with a lot more respect than Miss Koh did.

  “If her mother has been smart,” Jacob said, “she’s been putting money away. I paid them well enough when the seer was useful.” He pressed the button on his key and his car chirped as it unlocked.

  He felt as much as heard an electric hum from the power lines overhead. A surge of current vibrated down the street towards them and paused just over their heads.

  Jacob sent his thoughts to it. Follow.

  The car chimed and the heating breathed into life. Jacob slipped his sunglasses on, though the day was far from bright. “I need a coffee. You need a coffee?”

  “I don’t drink it,” Miss Koh said.

  “Tea?”

  “I do not drink the kind of tea they have in one of the stores you no doubt intend to visit.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you have an attitude problem?”

  “My mother,” Miss Koh said. “Often.”

  Jacob grunted and tapped the satnav on his dashboard. “Find me a Starbucks.”

  Xrixl, the little electrical daemon he’d conjured and imprinted into the device, beeped at him. The screen jumped and flickered as the daemon set to work. There wasn’t much of anything in Hayes, but there was a Starbucks in Ealing and it wasn’t far away. He slid the car into gear.

  “You will need a replacement seer?” Miss Koh asked.

  “A seer is indispensable,” Jacob said. “Everyone’s got one these days, from the financial vampires down in Canary Wharf to the old money families in their Kensington mansions. A good one can set a good asking price too.”

  “Shivani must not have been a good one.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She did not see this end coming for herself, did she?”

  “She saw it coming,” Jacob said. Shivani had asked him to take care of her mother, even though she must have known Jacob would do no such thing.

  The daemon in the power lines, Axrillax, surged along the street to the corner of Uxbridge Road, changed the traffic lights and held them until Jacob had turned east towards central London. Changing traffic lights was beneath a daemon of Axrillax’s might, but the satnav daemon, Xrixl, was fucking useless at it.

  The phone in his jacket pocket rang while they were passing through Southall. “Answer,” he said. Xuphf, the daemon in his phone, whipped its cord out like an eel. The tiny microphone clipped to his shirt and a single earbud lodged in his left ear.

  “Jacob,” said a baritone American voice. “You’ve heard the news, I assume?”

  “About Gregory Ferguson and his followers, yes I have,” Jacob replied. “I’m sorry for your loss, Reverend.”

  The Reverend was the leader and founder of the Cult of the Star-Shaped Eye in America. Jacob had watched one of his sermons online at the Reverend’s insistence. He wanted anyone he worked with to feel the Eye of Baelanoth and hear his holy words of guidance, as interpreted by the Reverend and the Reverend alone. It was all a load of bollocks to Jacob. God-like monsters from outside the universe demanded a terrible price for what they offered. But he had to admit that the Reverend was a damned fine speaker.

  A mutual acquaintance had introduced them when he learned the Reverend wanted to expand his cult across the Pond. Jacob seized the opportunity and when Gregory Ferguson and his wife had ar
rived at Heathrow six months previously, Jacob was there to meet them.

  The Reverend had an unshakeable certainty that anything that fleetingly crossed his mind was the most important thing in Jacob’s world. Because he paid well and because being there at the founding of a promising cult could turn out to be very profitable later, Jacob had already read the police report about the cult slaughter.

  “Gregory was a dear friend,” the Reverend said. “He and Laura often stayed with us at the ranch. We were very aligned, he and I. We saw Baelanoth’s vision for Britain with the same clear gaze. No one was better suited to bring the word of Baelanoth to your shores, Jacob. No one in all my flock.”

  “A true tragedy, Reverend,” Jacob said.

  “I’m sending Anthony,” the Reverend said. “He will arrive the day after tomorrow. Ensure he has the details he needs to punish those responsible.”

  “I’m in the process of finalising those details today,” Jacob said, which was an exaggeration. “Will your man need anything in the way of equipment? I can make the arrangements.”

  “He will need a car,” the Reverend said. “Otherwise he has matters in hand. This is a terrible setback for our great venture, but I have faith that through Baelanoth we will see the way.”

  “You know I’m at your service, Reverend.”

  “I do,” he replied, and hung up.

  “Was there any square inch of his arse you didn’t kiss?” Miss Koh asked.

  “People skills,” Jacob said. “Sanctimonious bastard thinks it’s his due, so that’s what he gets. This Anthony guy will be either a firebrand or a hard case. Bow your head and mumble the right words or keep it strictly business, respectively.”

  By then they were in Ealing and when he looked into the sky, Jacob could just make out the line of ghost electricity that arced down to Ealing’s old plague cemetery, connecting it back to Trafalgar Square in the city’s heart. Even to Jacob’s senses, it was only just visible in daylight.

  Xrixl in the satnav had a little precognition in him, just enough to have already worked out where the next free parking space close to Starbucks would be. Jacob turned down a side-street when the daemon directed him to do so. Axrillax, already well ahead, bounced off a set of lights at a pedestrian crossing, setting them flashing amber, and roared back.

  The coffee shop was located within what passed for a shopping mall in outer London. Jacob marched through it, scowling when people didn’t move out of his way in time and scowling even more when he had to veer around phalanxes of mother-propelled prams. Miss Koh kept up easily despite her shorter legs.

  He pulled out his phone as he navigated through the hordes of consumer drones. “Call Rich.” Xuphf dialled and in moments Jacob’s cousin was on the other end.

  “Been a while, Jake,” Richard said. “We so seldom hear from our ambitious young entrepreneur cousin, what with you being so independent and self-made and all.”

  “You know how it is, Rich, sometimes you need the dependability of family.”

  They both hated being called by the diminutives of their names.

  “Where are you?” Jacob asked. “Sounds like an airport in the background.”

  “Düsseldorf,” Richard said. “Don’t ask. Not that I mind this little interruption in my utterly enthralling wait between flights, but what do you want?”

  “I need a new seer.” Jacob tried to sound busy instead of desperate. “You know how I work it, by request to start with and then contract later on if all goes well. I need one today.”

  “What happened to your last one? Didn’t you have some immigrant family from Bangalore set up in Hayes?”

  “One moment, Rich.” He pulled the phone away from his mouth. “Double-shot espresso to go thanks, love.” The Bulgarian girl behind the counter did not offer so much as a hint of a smile. “Sorry Rich. I did, but she burned out quicker than usual. What have you got lying around?” He gritted his teeth. “I need this in a hurry.”

  “If I had a conscience, Jake, I would briefly wrestle with the idea of forcing you to tell me what you’re up to in exchange.”

  “Good thing you don’t have one, then.” He had to raise his voice over the whistle of the coffee machine.

  “As it happens,” Rich said, “I received an interesting email from a girl in Cardiff yesterday. In the conversation that followed I was offered some advice in return for a referral when you called today.”

  Jacob frowned. He tossed his credit card onto the counter and the Bulgarian girl’s eyes flashed as she scooped it up. “She called you?”

  “Yes, you might be swimming with sharks, taking this one on,” Richard said. “I could scare up one or two other possibilities if you want to play it safe.”

  “No, give me the Cardiff girl.” Even the better seers were usually head-cases. They didn’t take the initiative themselves, but instead relied on their families to put the word out looking for business. Jacob felt a ripple of anticipation.

  “I’ll shoot her number across to you,” Richard said. “She already knows yours.”

  “You gave it to her?”

  “Are you kidding? I didn’t even give her mine.”

  “Enjoy your airport, Rich.”

  On the way back to the car, Miss Koh said, “You dropped the ball, letting things get to where they did with Shivani. If a seer is as crucial as you seem to think, why didn’t you have a backup ready?”

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s been a busy few weeks.”

  “You should use a spy network,” Miss Koh said. “To rely on a single person is to invite failure.”

  His phone chimed as he got into the car. He looked at the screen, expecting to see a text from Richard, but instead found himself looking at a report.

  “What is it?” Miss Koh asked from the other seat.

  “One of my spies. It’s –” He sucked in a sharp breath.

  The report was from Xethe, the daemon he had placed in a data centre in Bristol. It was Xethe’s task to scour the internet and compile useful information, and to break it out of secure systems if need be. It was Xethe who had supplied the police report on the slaughter of Gregory Ferguson’s cult-members.

  A low-level thug Jacob had occasionally employed had died two nights previously by throwing himself in front of a train. But right before he died he had logged into a server hosted by a company that published bounties. If you lived in Jacob’s world and you wanted someone dead, you posted it with them.

  Right before he died, he searched that bounty board for Julian Blackwood.

  “Who?” Miss Koh asked.

  Jacob looked up from his phone. “What?”

  “You said a name,” she said. “Who is Julian Blackwood?”

  “You don’t know who the Blackwoods are?”

  “Should I?”

  Jacob took a careful sip of his coffee. His hand was steady. He couldn’t believe that with the old hate roaring inside him that his hand could be so steady.

  “This is personal?” Miss Koh said. “You’ve spoken of making sure things don’t get personal.”

  “I bet you sound exactly like your mother,” Jacob said.

  Miss Koh bared her small, white teeth. “You are fortunate that my contract with you prevents me from killing you.”

  “Julian dropped off the face of the earth four years ago,” Jacob said. He reread Xethe’s message. “He can’t have been back long. Word would have got around.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not the only person who wants him dead.”

  A message with a number in it came through from Richard. He rang the number.

  “Jacob Mandellan, so nice to finally speak to you.” She had a lilting Welsh accent. It wasn’t strong, but Jacob would put money on her making an effort not to lose it.

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  “My name is Catherine, never Cathy,” she said. “I can hear anger in your voice, Jacob. You just found out about Julian Blackwood, didn’t you?”

  “You’d k
now.”

  “The sequence of information going your way wasn’t fixed,” Catherine said. “You need a seer right now, don’t you Jacob? You want to know about a cargo. Your little electrical spies haven’t been able to get into Gordon Bainbridge’s files, nor into the Odd’s Transport system.”

  Fuck me, Jacob thought. The Bainbridge cargo was the other piece of business he’d had Shivani looking into. It was why he needed a replacement seer so urgently. That ripple of anticipation had grown into a rising wave of fierce glee.

  “Do I have the job?” Catherine asked.

  “You’re hired. Tell me.”

  “The nature of the cargo prevents easy tracking,” Catherine said. “That’s what burned poor Shivani out so fast. You were asking her to look at something that literally ate her talent right out of her.”

  “But not yours?”

  “It would if I tried to fix on it, but I know better,” Catherine said. “I can feel its course though, once the cargo enters our world. I can feel where I mustn’t look.”

  Jacob grinned. “You have a route.”

  “I’m sending it to you now.”

  “I look forward to working with you again, Catherine.”

  “You haven’t seen my bill yet.”

  Chapter 9 – Rob and Julian, Wednesday

  The pub in the nearest town was a two-storey wooden building with a corrugated tin roof that smelled of burnt metal. The rest of the structure was so dry it looked as if it would burn down in thirty seconds flat.

  Rob loped in while the western sky was a brilliant splash of red, the same tint as the thoughts in his head.

  The beer was served in a half pint glass. He thought they were having him on and snarled for a proper drink, but the heavy-set man behind the bar, who smelled of powdery deodorant and soapy hands, pointed out that everyone else had a half-pint too.

  It took him seven minutes to pick a fight. The man had biceps the circumference of Rob’s waist. He smelled of gasoline and hydraulic grease.