Blue Angel

by Phil Williams

  There was a sound like a hammer hitting an anvil. Agony seared through his head, bouncing from one temple to the other. He blinked to clear his vision, but it didn’t help.

  The hammer again, increasing the throb of his headache. He gritted his teeth and threw himself back in the chair. Arms and legs held fast, chair itself fixed in place, couldn’t move any more than to twist from side to side. A few metres’ space on either side, and ahead. No windows, only chipped grey brickwork. A little light came through a hole in the wall, near the ceiling.

  The place stank like rust on a hob, making his nostrils curl. From the itch under his nose and the sting around his eyes, he guessed the smell actually came from him.

  Another hammer blast, metal on metal.

  He pulled at his restraints, first with his wrists then with his legs. A sharp pain stung his foot. A scream came out that sounded too high, too girly, to be his. But his eyes were watering, and he was the one hurting. And that was his foot, bound in a sodden bandage, black at the point of the toe where he’d bled the most.

  Tears streamed down his cheeks as he clenched his jaw against the pain.

  The hammering stopped. They’d heard him.

  He sniffed, hard, as his face leaked more weak, pitiful fluids.

  This was nothing, he told himself. Just the body betraying him. False signals, indicators of pain that didn’t really matter. Nothing to fear, nothing really at all.

  He forced himself to smile. Nothing at all. Enjoyable, if you let it be.

  Something squeaked behind him, the hinges of an old, heavy door. Footsteps thumped into the room. The slow, low voice of the animal that had brought him here. Dry, emotionless. “Ready for more?”

  He started laughing, head bowing forward, and as his body shook pain shot through him again. He flinched and shifted his foot. The bad foot. It produced another agonised shriek. But he was still laughing, louder, manic. No way anyone’s gonna know the difference, a scream or a laugh.

  Between his wheezing chuckles and behind his tears, he heard the goon say, “Fuck’s sake, this again.”

  20

  Sam Ward watched the artificial lung working alongside Rufaizu. In the two days since he’d been interred in the Greek Street med bay, no one had done much to make the young man clean or comfortable. His bright turquoise coat was draped over a chair, darkened by patches of blood, but there was no sign of his other clothes or possessions. He lay in a beige hospital smock, restrained by thick leather straps at his wrists and ankles, with two tubes sticking out of his arm, one connected to a drip, the other running into the machine. She had no idea what it was doing; certainly not pumping air into him. The lung moved with a clattering, unsteady noise that suggested, along with the tarnished bed frame and the scuffed seat of the chair, that the MEE’s medical facilities needed updating.

  Whatever the case, Landon had been mistaken. The young man was very much unconscious, and hadn’t responded to her various attempts to stir him. She’d opened an eyelid and found his eye rolled back in his head. Casaria was the only one who had talked to their most valuable lead. Maybe the only one who’d seen the boy awake. That was probably his intention, from the haphazard way that Casaria had reeled the boy in, holding off bringing him here to enact his own personal investigation. It wasn’t clear exactly what was wrong with Rufaizu now, other than the patched-up bullet wound on his neck, and Dr Hertz wasn’t around to ask. No surprise there; with dusk setting in, most of the Ministry staff had left the building, patting themselves on the back for a good day’s work. A member of Support’s night team would drop in on Rufaizu every few hours, with alerts for emergencies wired to a computer upstairs.

  The latest incident was in hand, with the media briefed and all casualties accounted for. Support had tracked the praelucente towards the southwestern districts of Ordshaw, most likely under Nothicker, where building fires and accidents were a part of everyday life. As Nothicker was unlikely to make the news, everyone could go home. They’d received a fax from Lord Asquith on the Raleigh Commission, congratulating the office on a good day’s work: Back to normal tomorrow, the world stops caring overnight! Something about his communication encapsulated everything that was wrong with the Ministry. The affirmation of an out-of-touch pencil-pusher, a generation removed from reality with his bloody printed messages. Never mind his actual message, in what world did he find a fax better than their countless other options? Near as Sam was aware, it was just a slower email that required printing. Of course, he was afraid of change. Doing things the way they’d always been done, the same mentality that got people going home when the bell went.

  If I was in charge of this office, Sam told herself, everyone would’ve been in on Saturday morning and no one would’ve gone home yet. If she could live without bad dates and learning about marine life in South America, they could live without their pubs and reality TV shows. The monsters would be fully monitored, her questions answered, and this boy would have medical care 24/7. At the very least the supervising doctor – their only doctor – would leave a chart by the bed detailing exactly what the problem was. The W4-MS filed in the weekend’s reports said Rufaizu had been shot and placed under guard, but the details were scant and written in what looked like purposefully obtuse handwriting.

  That was another thing: all handwritten reports should be legible.

  The door opened and Landon entered, holding two disposable cups, their contents steaming. Sam caught the scent of chocolate from the murky brown liquid he offered her. His, she noted, was black, strong coffee.

  “Thanks, but I don’t drink milk,” Sam said, taking the cup anyway.

  “It’s done with water,” he said. Sam didn’t bother explaining the concept of powdered drinks. It was a nice enough gesture, and they’d enjoyed at least an amicable kind of silence since Bristol Street station. She regretted raising her voice at him, but it must have made an impression, as he’d made no more fuss.

  “Shouldn’t you be heading home?” Sam asked.

  “Got a shift starting in twenty minutes,” Landon said. “Might as well slog through.”

  “But you’ve been in all day?”

  He shrugged. Perhaps his disengaged style used so little energy it could be sustained indefinitely. “You need a ride home?”

  “No. I’m not happy with where we’ve got to.”

  “Plenty of avenues to try tomorrow.”

  “And this evening. I intend to search our files for a reference to this grugulochs. To see what was written about the Ripton Chapel. Maybe look deeper into Pax Kuranes’ known contacts. Who’s on the Support night shift? I want to ask about Pax’s question, too, about where the energy goes.”

  Landon had an almost sympathetic look on his face.

  “You honestly don’t see why it’s useful?” she said.

  Landon was ready to move on. “Word is,” he said, pointing his cup towards Rufaizu, “he’s been out since yesterday. Operations have been waiting for Hertz to declare the kid stable before anyone questioned him.”

  “How bad can it be?” Sam said. “A Fae bullet surely doesn’t leave that much damage. How can he lie half awake for two days then slip into a coma?”

  “I don’t think it’s a coma,” Landon said. He indicated the drip. “He’s sleeping.”

  Rufaizu was certainly in something deeper than sleep, but she’d assumed that bag was feeding him vital nutrients. “They’ve drugged him?”

  “Not unusual. We’re not running a hospital, or a prison. You get someone difficult, it’s easier that way, till we can decide what to do with them. Chances are Casaria’s interview got him agitated and made it more necessary.”

  “Can we disable it?” Sam said. “Wake him up?”

  “Without a signed AO-31, no. You’d need director-level clearance for that, to override the doctor’s orders.”

  “Then let’s get Dr Hertz on the phone.”

  “I tried. Three times.”

  Sam gave Landon a surprised look. It wasn’t go
od news, but at least he was trying.

  She studied Rufaizu again. What a life he must have led, hiding so effectively that their organisation had believed him dead. He was so young, not meant for the abuses of someone like Casaria, or the Sunken City. It was dumb luck that he’d been picked up by Casaria rather than someone more professional. Could they have avoided this if her search plan had been implemented properly? Sam said, “How exactly did Casaria find him?”

  “Only way Casaria ever does anything effective. Coincidence. Rufaizu frequented the sort of dives Casaria ducks into himself.”

  “It wasn’t Operations following my guidelines? Checking Apothel’s old haunts?”

  Landon gave her a look that said he had no idea what she was talking about, so that was a no. But Casaria didn’t get things done by coincidence, Sam knew that. He got things done by forcing them. Ignoring the rules. In this case, maybe he had taken her plans on board, even if the rest of the team hadn’t. Sometimes, uneasy as it made Sam to admit it, his ways worked. What choice did you have in an office that made you fill in forms to open a door? There was a reason Casaria was the only person to speak to Rufaizu. The same reason he’d got close to Pax Kuranes and whatever she was involved in. Maybe the same reason he was stuck in a low-end position all his life, too. Never mind.

  Sam said, “Are the sedatives monitored? Would it raise alarms if we cut them for a few hours?”

  Landon’s face fixed in discomfort, but he said, “It’s a bag of liquid – you could drain a bit in the sink if you wanted the levels to read right.”

  He’d surprised her again, and it made Sam smile. “And the machine?”

  “Measuring novisan. Kind of.”

  Sam arched an eyebrow, unaware that it was possible to directly measure the strange energy in people. Though Landon’s kind of suggested it wasn’t.

  “It won’t be affected by removing the drip,” he added.

  “Show me how.”

  Landon did so without question or pomp, waddling to the drip and disabling it at a tap in the middle. He disconnected the cable, slid a bedpan out from under the bed and left the tube hanging in, liquid oozing out. He paused a moment, studying his work, then walked to a small unit of drawers and searched for something. He came back with another bag of clear liquid, which he hooked up alongside the original, and plugged this into Rufaizu’s arm. “To keep him hydrated. I’d give him a few hours, at least. But that’ll do it.” Landon nodded satisfaction, then said, “Got something for you to look at in the meantime. Upstairs.”

  She gestured for him to lead the way, and gave the sleeping youth one last look before following Landon out into the corridor. She glanced over her shoulder, in case anyone was watching, feeling naughty.

  “There’s been no signal on Barton’s phone,” Landon said, as they continued towards the stairs. “Support’s done limited checks into surveillance footage for the Bartons and my car, but they hardly had the manpower for it. It’s just Roper on it this evening.”

  Roper. Sam pictured him; usually found in the hours when the more competent workers had clocked off. He was pushing retirement age, always wore woollen tank tops and made coffee at a snail’s pace.

  They climbed the stairwell to the sixth floor, the main office. The lights were dim, desk lamps glowing where Roper and a younger analyst were working, two aisles apart. They were staring into their screens like zombies. Sam asked Landon, “Has Mathers left specific orders for the overnight search?”

  “Watch the figures, that’s all.”

  “And you’re going back out on patrol?”

  “Not right away. I’ve got a waterway sighting to follow up on, but that can wait. Here, what I thought you might be interested in. We recovered this from Ms Kuranes’ apartment when we got hold of the Fae weapon.” Landon guided her to one of the side-desks, where a massive leather-bound book lay, an ancient tome like something out of a centuries-old monastery. Its title was viciously scratched into the front.

  Apothel’s Miscellany.

  “We’re in luck,” Landon said, opening it and tapping a piece of paper inside. Crumpled but white, much newer than the book. There were lots of similar leaves sticking out. “Seems Ms Kuranes did a job of translating it.”

  “All of it?”

  “A fair chunk.”

  Sam turned a few pages, glancing from cryptic symbols and sketches of savage monsters to the rounded lettering of Pax. The existence of this book had been rumoured for years, but, like the Fae’s Dispenser, no one thought it had survived Apothel. The state of the chapel suggested he would have destroyed it, in his descent. She’d ignored it in Casaria’s reports herself, and a quick scan reminded her why. Between the things they knew to be true, such as the sickles and the wormbirds, were creatures of pure invention and wildly inventive maps with no resemblance to the world the Ministry had charted.

  “Until the boy wakes up,” Landon said, “I figured this might be useful.”

  “Has it been analysed?”

  “No one’s had time.”

  Sam settled on a drawing that had to represent what Apothel believed about the praelucente. It showed a trainload of commuters, their souls being sucked out of their bodies, with the margin notes labelling it as the minotaur’s grasp. And the title, in large symbols, was paired with Pax’s handwritten translation.

  Grugulochs.

  That same word, written on the chapel, and heard, in some form, by Malcolm Joseph that morning. The Ministry were wrong to discount Apothel and those connected to his legacy. Sam called out across the room, “Roper? Are you busy?”

  The old man was startled, as if he’d not realised there was anyone else there. The night staff were typically engrossed in piecing together the various energy readings that could indirectly measure the more mysterious force of novisan; they didn’t often need to interact with real people.

  “I need you to look into the novisan levels across the city,” Sam instructed. “See if there’s any suggestion that the levels don’t merely decrease with the praelucente’s surge, if they change elsewhere at the same time. Agent Landon, I’d like very much if you’d find –”

  “Excuse me,” Roper responded, turning quizzically in his chair. “Who are you?”

  Sam paused in disbelief.

  “Damn it, Roper,” Landon grumbled, “you don’t know the Head of IS? She’s our ranking officer right now. And she just gave you a damn order.”

  Sam felt her cheeks flushing. This was it, then, her chance to do something useful with the office, if only for one night. Between Landon, this old man, a dusty book and a drugged youth, maybe she could resolve the crisis by the morning. She completed her instructions: “Agent Landon. Please find Casaria.”

  21

  Pax tied the bike helmet’s straps round the handlebars, taking in her target warehouse against a sky painted purple by the setting sun. The workhouse, as Bees called it, was a huge brick cube with high latticed windows and a couple of chimneys out back. It would’ve been an eyesore elsewhere, but it blended in to the widely forgotten warehouse district.

  Letty pushed out of Pax’s coat pocket and flew to head height. “Looks like a fucking abattoir.”

  “It might’ve been,” Pax said. In a way, it still was; she’d heard drills and saws and seen bloodied aprons in there. It was possible they were butchering illegally imported animals. But not likely. When Bees brought morbid hypotheticals to the poker table, the topics tended to hint towards getting away with crimes or getting people to talk. Most people laughed it off as dark humour, and Pax hoped some of it was. Bees and Mr Monroe were not bad people, even if they operated in a bad business. Not like Jack the Tee, a wayward poker player who you wouldn’t dare look in the eye. Surely?

  Pax’s stomach turned at the thought of going in there, and she wondered if picking up a burrito on the way had been a mistake. Would projectile vomiting in fear serve as a good distraction if she needed to escape?

  She asked Letty, “You’ll come with me, right?”
/>
  “Yeah,” Letty said. “I’ll go through the roof.”

  “Pocket’s not good enough for you now?” Pax half-joked, wanting her closer.

  “Pocket’s not good for any Fae,” Lightgate said, descending with the grace of an angel. Holding a refilled hip-flask. She pointed it at Letty. “You ought to be ashamed.”

  “Spin on it,” Letty replied. “Let’s rip your wing off and see how you travel. Besides, didn’t you always say we oughta make slaves of the lummoxes?”

  Lightgate looked away, uninterested, to let out an unashamed belch. “You know we could get Casaria out of there without the human.”

  “What?” Pax exclaimed. There was no way that would end well, considering Lightgate’s turnbold plan. “No. They’re reasonable guys, I can talk them around.”

  “Reasonable people who abducted a government agent?”

  “If he’s here. Just lay low,” Pax said. “Let me handle it.” Lightgate gave an unconvinced your funeral shrug, so she added, “We’re mates.”

  “Unless you say the wrong word by accident,” Letty said. “If these pricks are the sort of people that hang around here, icing them might be the best move.”

  “Shouldn’t one of you be the good conscience?” Pax said, looking from one bloody-minded little angel to the other. “Neither of you think I can resolve this peacefully?”

  “You’re a human,” Lightgate sighed. “I assume the worst.”

  “I can do it without making a scene,” Letty said. “Blow off some steam.”

  “Please don’t,” Pax said. “Besides them being, as I said, mates, I’m pretty sure their roots run deep in this city. There’d be consequences.”

  “For you,” Lightgate said.

  Pax gave Letty a sideways look, asking her to settle this. Letty said, “Fine. But we’ll be ready.”

  Pax took a deep breath and started walking, pushing her hands deep in her pockets. The two fairies took off towards the sky as she approached the massive steel door that opened into the warehouse. No sounds of drills or saws, at least. Maybe they weren’t in.