“What about the authorities?” Julian asked. “People like the Shield Foundation. Why haven’t you gone to them?”
“The Shield Foundation?” Alice said from the doorway. “I took out an entire assault team by myself.” When Rob’s jaw clenched she said, “Oh please. Grow up, boy.”
Rob rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced.
“There are plenty of others,” Julian said. “Go to the London Council and get them to pull their resources together. I’m sure they can handle this.”
“The London Council can’t even keep the vampires and werewolves under control,” Evelyn said. “I know you’ve been gone a long time Julian, but even before you left you must have understood they’re barely any use at all.”
“The vampires and werewolves,” Julian said.
Alice laughed. “The thought of trying to save lives would not even cross the minds of the London vampire lords. They would be offended if you suggested it. The werewolves are no better.”
“There are magical societies,” Julian said.
“You know as well as I that the majority of them are nothing but dabblers,” Evelyn said. “Even the ones that come from old families and have their resources to call on have never really worked hard enough to make something of themselves, not like you and Jacob Mandellan.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed. “Well, there you have it. Try Jacob. I’m sure he’d love a big victory like this.”
“Jacob is in a coma,” Alice said. “I left him in a hospital after you destroyed that big electrical daemon of his.”
An unfamiliar feeling crept over Rob while the others argued. He and Julian had carried a dangerous cargo across the channel to Paris. Shortly afterwards, whoever Gordon Bainbridge had been working for had kicked off what sounded like a pretty big disaster in the making. Lots of people were going to die. No one was doing anything about it.
Scratching the side of his head, he said to Julian, “We did this.”
“What? No we didn’t. Whatever idiot thought they could chain a half-dead wizard, that’s who did this.”
“We played a part. Whatever was in that crate we were carrying, it was for this.”
“That’s not the same thing,” Julian snapped.
“It’s close enough for me,” Rob said. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so against this?”
Julian opened and closed his hands.
“I mean, this guy can’t be worse than the shit we went through last night, can he?”
“Yes, he can be.” He stared at the floor. “I did my part, Rob. While I was away, I was a soldier. And before that, before I left –” He bit back his next words. “People like the Shield Foundation, those people who jumped us outside, they exist to do this sort of thing. Let them do it. It’s my turn to have a normal life.”
Rob shrugged. “Could be overrated, that whole normal life thing. I mean, what were we going to do tonight? I was going to lock myself in a cage in a basement and you were going to end up sleeping with a vampire, unless I misread the situation when I looked in on you two.”
Alice made a small sound of outrage. Julian sighed said to Rob, “You’re doing this thing, aren’t you?”
“I made the mess,” Rob said. “Some of it, anyway. I want to help clean it up.”
“Fine then. Fine.”
“Can you teleport us?” Evelyn asked Julian.
He looked taken aback by the question. “No. That takes a lot of preparation and a lot more strength than I have after the last forty-eight hours.”
“We do have a cannibal van,” Rob said.
Evelyn frowned. “A what?”
Rob searched for the keys in his room while Julian collected his things. They gathered again downstairs, Rob in some old clothes that weren’t torn up and Julian with his satchel over his shoulder.
“You know, I think we’ve still got our satnav,” Rob said as he opened the front door.
A ten year old girl stood on the other side of the door. She had her hand raised to knock. Rob had time to realise he knew her from somewhere before she whipped a flashlight out and shone it in his face.
He thought of purple arrows and King Henry the Eighth at the steering wheel of a humvee.
Then there was a flash of black light. Rob blinked, his head clear. He saw Julian had his right hand raised and closed into a fist. The girl’s mouth fell open in astonishment.
“She just tried to mesmerise us.” Evelyn’s voice was shrill with anger. “You little bitch!”
“Hey,” Rob said. “That’s no way to speak to a lady.”
A blush exploded on the girl’s cheeks. She clutched her flashlight to her chest and stared at Rob.
“I know you, don’t I?” Rob said. “You live next door.”
“Yes!” she squeaked.
“I don’t think we’ve ever met. I’m Rob.”
“Jessica!” Her eyes were getting even bigger.
Rob wondered if she was about to burst into tears or something. “So, why did you try to hypnotise us, or whatever that just was?”
“I have to get to Trafalgar Square! A man with writing all over him kidnapped my sister!”
Evelyn pushed forward. “Why would he want your sister?”
“We’re on our way there now,” Rob said. “Don’t worry, we’ll try to rescue her for you. I think I remember what she looks like. Black hair and looks annoyed all the time, right?”
“I’m coming too,” Jessica said. “You own one of these vans out here, right?”
“Yeah, but you’re just a little –”
“Wait here,” she said as she scrambled over the brick fence that separated the front yards of Flat 1 and 2. “I’ll get my tortoise!”
She bolted through her front door and he heard her rushing upstairs. “Why is she getting a tortoise?”
Chapter 29 – Friday Night
Fiona felt a great surge of anger towards the people milling around Trafalgar Square. People in business attire, ties askew, made their way home after stopping at the pub after work and others, more fabulously dressed, passed through for the beginning of their night out. Families and couples on vacation swivelled around, brochures and travel books in hand, looking at Nelson’s Column, at the fountains, at the four plinths spaced out near the edges of the square.
Some were excited to be there, others tired from a long day. Drunken celebrations staggered past drunken commiserations. Some hoped to find sex or love while others who looked to forget someone no longer special to them.
But none of them, not one, not any of them, had the slightest idea that she was sitting right in front of them in pieces. She had been sliced up and portioned out to different girls in different lives, separated by more years than should be possible, by whom and for what reason she did not know. None of the people in Trafalgar Square had a clue. They had one life each and they were living it.
It was too much. She hated them all.
Savraith, his hands draped behind his back, paced towards her where she sat on the low wall containing one of the fountains. He did not hurry. He knew she had nowhere to go any more. No one, she saw, noticed the writing tattooed across his face and hands. That seemed unfair to her too.
“It would have been better, I think, to tell you who you are before I took away who you thought you were.”
“Does it even matter who I was born as?” Fiona asked. “I’m just scattered shards of a person. I never had time to grow into anyone before they replaced who I was.”
“It matters,” Savraith said, “because with your birthright, you might be able to put yourself back together.”
Anger flushed her cheeks. “You had better mean what you just said.”
“I can begin you on your journey. I can take you far enough for you to make the rest of that journey yourself.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“There is a place called Riesarch. It is very far from here, across the black gulf between worlds. You are from there. You are, in fact, of the royal family.”
She burst out laughing. “Are you trying to tell me I’m a princess?”
“You have reason to think you are not?”
“Oh, this is rich,” she said. “Princesses are wealthy and powerful and have paparazzi following them around all day. I live in a flat with a divorced mother of two.”
Savraith remained where he was. He did not look angry or impatient. A woman staring at her phone walked around him, avoiding him without appearing to see him.
“That’s what you’re saying all this is about?” she asked. “That’s why I’ve been erased and given someone else’s memories time and time again? What am I, a lost princess like that Russian girl? Was there a revolution and someone spirited me away before they could cut my head off?”
“I do not know how you came to be here,” Savraith said. “Though who would think to look for a lost Reisarch princess in this desolate place? But I can see the evidence of the royal line in you. I see that as clearly as I see that you have dark hair. I am a wizard and it is my right to see such things.”
She looked around. Savraith had just said that to her and still it was just a regular Friday night in London. A skinny man with untidy hair was handing out pamphlets as he wandered through the crowd. A couple grinned at each other, arms around each other, still in the giddy early phase of a romance. Three middle-aged women in evening dresses stopped when one of them had technical difficulties with her heels.
Fiona said, “There was a man who knew who I was. He tried to kill me. He wasn’t human. He looked it, most of the time, but he wasn’t. I burned him up in a dream.”
“Chasing your birthright, I expect,” Savraith said.
“What birthright? I go back and suddenly I’m the queen? I don’t think so.”
“You have power, Fiona,” he said. “Great power, as the primitive people of this forgotten world do not. That you are unable to wield it is no surprise. Who here could unlock your heritage? Who here could teach you? They will welcome you home in Reisarch. They will be glad for the return for one as precious as you.”
“They could make me whole?”
“They can.”
Savraith spoke with a kind of distant politeness, but Fiona found it easy to imagine him as someone who took what he wanted without bothering to ask. She couldn’t understand why he chose to negotiate. She had not noticed how Savraith avoided her shadow. “What do you want in return?”
“My” – the corner of his mouth twitched; the first hint of emotion she had seen him display – “peers are distrustful, as a ruler must be. My sudden departure from our domain will have made them wary. If I were to return with the friendship of a Reisarchi princess, it would appease their concerns. Your people are powerful and their friendship can be of great value.”
Her brow wrinkled. “You want me to make some kind of blind promise when I don’t even –”
He held up a hand. “A promise of friendship only, nothing more. I will, after all, have done you a great service.”
She was sure he was deceiving her, that that it would be better to keep pressing him, to nail down the exact terms of their bargain. But he was offering her all the answers she sought. He was offering a real life, not this false one constructed for her.
He was offering her the chance to reclaim herself.
That thread of power spiralling down to him from the top of Nelson’s Column bothered her. She didn’t know what it meant. She couldn’t imagine what it might be. But she said, “How do we do it?”
“The power we need is here,” Savraith said. “Can you see it?”
“I see it,” she said. She thought of the strands of the web spreading out across London. “What is it? What’s it for?”
“It is an old thing, of no importance. As for where, best to have some room to work with.” He held out his hand. “We want a bridge.”
Rob climbed out of the van and stared at the sea of people swirling around in Trafalgar Square. Their clothes, the way they moved, the sounds they called out to each other and most of all, their mingled scents – a near-overload of sensory information. It came through strong over the bus exhaust, the smell from the gutters and the hint of the River Thames not so far away.
He clutched his bare wrist as if he could will his iron bracelet to reappear.
“Are you with us, Rob?” Julian asked as he got out of the van.
“Yes,” he croaked.
“Damn it, look,” Evelyn said. “He’s drawing power already.”
Jessica leapt out after her. “I see it too. Mr Beak, can you see it? Follow it to the wizard?”
Mr Beak fluttered up to the top of the van’s open back door. “Are you out of your mind? Go near him?”
“Just close enough to see him,” Jessica said. “Just so we know where he is.”
“I am sure you can manage spying from a considerable distance,” Mr Shell said from the back of the van.
“I am so screwed,” Mr Beak said. He took off with a rattle of glass feathers.
Rob stood staring at the crowd in the square. “Do we have to go through there?”
“The facility entrance is on the far side of the square, near the stairs,” Evelyn said.
“I can’t do that.” Rob voice scrambled up towards outright panic. “I’d sooner cross a river of bloody lava. I’m going to freak out in the middle of it and turn a class of Italian high school kids on an excursion into monster food.”
“You’ll be fine,” Julian said. “One foot in front of the other, that’s all it is.”
“One foot in front of the other with all these tasty fucking people around, is what it is,” Rob said.
“Can we skip the spoiled brat whining?” Alice asked. “I want to see the infamous Doctor Hargrave’s Trafalgar facility.”
“Lead the way, Evelyn,” Julian said.
Rob tried to keep as far as he could from every single person in the square as he crossed it. He was aware of Julian at his side, just walking along like they were out for an evening stroll, like they’d just come out of the pub and were still talking rubbish. He tried to hold on to that image. Just two guys who’ve been to the pub, a couple of girls they’d chatted up and a ten year old girl with a mechanical tortoise. Usual sort of night at the old regular.
No one paid him any mind. The full damned moon was going to rise any time now. His nails tingled with the nearness of the change. His nostrils flared at every warm scent. Every loud cry made his ears twitch. He had changed tonight without hunting, without feasting, and he was near feral with hunger. And still, no one paid him any mind.
Mr Shell got a little attention from the crowd, but Jessica had brought an old model car radio control pad and she pretended to steer him. The tortoise bore the deception in dignified silence.
They reached the wall on the far side of the square. Then there was an iron door that Rob hadn’t noticed before, but that sort of thing was just about business as usual now.
“My key isn’t working,” Evelyn said, though as near as Rob could tell she had only pressed her ring against the door.
Julian put his hand flat against the metal. His mouth moved, though he didn’t speak aloud. A series of heavy clunks sounded from inside. Evelyn frowned at him and Julian said, “It’s not really locked, just all scrambled. After you.”
They clustered together in an lift and in moments they were clattering downwards. Rob’s shoulders lowered a millimetre. The crowd was gone. All he had now was the scents of three people and a vampire to drive him nuts.
“Should we –?” He shook himself. “Should we be getting ready for trouble here?”
“The wizard is somewhere else,” Evelyn said.
“But he might have left traps for us, or someone to guard the facility,” Julian said. “Good thinking, Rob.”
“I personally would rather not share this small space with a large, hairy werewolf,” Evelyn said.
“You’re a real cow, you know that?” Jessica said. Alice laughed.
The lift shuddered to a halt an
d the doors slid open. When the others were out of the lift he peeled off his shirt and transformed himself. He didn’t have to will it. Tonight, of all nights, the monster wanted out.
His chest deepened and his shoulders broadened. Bare skin grew grey fur. His claws hands grasped the edges of the lift doorway and his teeth, bared in pain, sharpened into fangs in his long mouth. He made the space in the lift tiny.
“Wow,” Jessica said, staring up at him.
Rob towered over her. In his rumbling voice he asked, “You’re not scared?”
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “If you give me any trouble, Mr Shell will zap you so hard you’ll head-butt the ceiling.”
Rob met the tortoise’s gemstone eyes. “I apologise in advance, Mr Cromwell.”
“No hard feelings in advance, I guess,” Rob said.
The lights dipped, flickered, shivered back to steady.
“We need to hurry,” Evelyn said.
They followed a wide iron corridor. Here and there, panels had been torn apart and machinery designed for purposes Rob couldn’t guess at was strewn across the floor. Rob’s senses reached out ahead of them, but he didn’t catch a scent that was fresh, nor did he hear the breathing of anyone lying in wait.
But there was something else up ahead. It was cold and it made him bare his teeth. He could see it affecting the others, too. Julian hunched his shoulders. Jessica chewed on a lock of her hair.
“I am detecting a significant aetheric charge in the air,” Mr Shell said as he puttered along behind them.
“Damn,” Evelyn said. She started to run.
Rob burst into motion and loped ahead of her on all fours. His hackles were raised and a growl rattled in his throat. Fear squirmed in his guts and he wanted something to fight.
The corridor opened into a large, industrial iron chamber. His eyes were drawn immediately to the sarcophagus at the centre of the room. It was covered in frost and Rob felt a black whirlpool sucking at his thoughts, even from across the room.
He also felt a presence. It made him flatten his ears back.
“Oh,” Alice said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What is it?” Rob asked.
Ghost Electricity Page 29
