Strangeness and Charm

by Mike Shevdon

  "It's a siege," he said gleefully, "Some bloke's got himself holed up in the house – they reckon he's got a hostage. Gonna have to shoot him, I reckon."

  "Won't that risk the hostage?"

  "Nah. They'll use one of them sharpshooters from the windows opposite, you wait and see."

  I stood on tiptoe, watching the police moving around the vehicles and talking into radios. There was no sign of weapons being deployed, but they were unlikely to have them on show. I went back to where Tate leaned against a tree in the shade.

  "Will the police try and storm the house?"

  "Not unless obvious violence breaks out. They want a peaceful outcome. They won't push it, at least not yet. Armed response will be on the way, so that could change."

  "We need to move quickly then, what about you?"

  "Garvin said it was your problem, but I'll watch your back."

  "Thanks. You're a great help."

  Tate grinned. "I have confidence in you."

  I glanced back towards the gawkers and then turned and walked away from the police line, heading back towards the end of the row of houses.

  These houses were built in red-brick terraces, originally two stories high but every one had a loft conversion or a gable window as a third floor. Some had whitewashed rendering on the upper floors or a mock balcony with french doors, painted shut through disuse. The front doors were set two by two along the row with no access to the rear from the front of the house. The bins were all in the front gardens, waiting for bin-day. I counted the numbers on the houses to make sure I had the right house.

  The police would be aware that rear gardens backed onto each other and would have people in the house behind, but the presence would be significantly lighter than out here on the street. They were only there to prevent the suspect from bolting over the back fence. If I wanted a quiet entry, that's where it would be.

  In a northern town there would be a service alley, dark enough for muggings and illicit drug-taking, but here the original substantial gardens had no access from the street. Each owner had taken advantage of this by building blocky extensions onto the back of the row, leaving a square of green as a token garden, except for the end-house that had taken advantage of the road access by building a garage which faced the side road. It was simplicity itself to cloak myself in glamour and trip the lock to the garage with a pulse of power, pulling the door closed as Tate followed me through.

  The garage let me out of a side-door into a passageway and from there I could lift myself up on the fence and peer into the next garden before vaulting over, one at a time. Tate and I settled into a natural rhythm, only one of us moving, the other watching.

  The gardens were in contrast to each other, some strewn with children's toys and trampolines while others grew couch grass and thistles to waist-height. Counting the houses back to the one with the police vehicles parked out front, I paused a couple of doors down, letting myself become accustomed to the noise of the city. The sirens were getting closer, but it wouldn't help to climb over the fence and land on top of one the officers watching the rear of the house. I couldn't see them, but I knew they must be there.

  I waited while Tate joined me. He pointed over the back fence and was rewarded with a cough from the garden of the houses opposite. There was a low conversation and then silence again. I stared at the windows of the houses facing the back of the row, noting where shadows moved at windows or curtains twitched. There were either a lot of policemen or some nosey neighbours. Probably both.

  With everyone watching it was going to be more obvious if I went through the back door of the house, even concealed by glamour. I could ask Tate to create a distraction, but that would only attract more notice. I wanted the attention at the front where all the police cars were. I didn't want them raising the alarm and drawing attention to the rear of the building because they thought something might be happening inside. If I was going to bring my target back with me I needed a way in, and a way out. I looked again at the backs of the houses. The back doors, like the front doors, went in pairs along the row, separated by high fences.

  The extensions at the back were two stories high. I moved quietly to the door of the neighbouring house and listened. In all likelihood, if anyone was home, they would have either been moved out by the police or told to stay indoors and out of sight. I wondered which.

  I pointed to the door, and Tate nodded and pointed to the ground where he was, indicating that he would stay and make sure no one disturbed me.

  A hand on the back door released the locks and I eased the door open, listening for sounds of occupation. The door led into a white-painted kitchen with a very modern range cooker. I closed the door behind me and listened again. There were sounds from the front of the house, but that was probably coming from the road. I crept through the hall, seeing the blue flashes from the emergency vehicles refracted through the glass in the front door. There was a coat-rack, mostly empty, and post on the doormat from earlier in the day.

  Taking that as a positive sign I slipped upstairs and listened again on the first floor. The sound of approaching sirens had stopped which either meant that they were not headed this way or that whoever had been making all that noise had arrived and sirens were no longer necessary. I hoped for the former, but suspected the latter.

  Reinforcing the glamour, I went quickly up a second set of stairs that looked like they had been added to reach the loft conversion. It was decorated for a child's room, posters of comic heroes and video games. There was a front window, which I avoided, and a back one that looked out over the flat roof of the rear extension, which was what I'd been hoping for.

  With my glamour locked tight, I let myself out of the upper window onto the flat roof and moved quickly across the open space, leaping the gap to the next house. This was the one next to my target, so I kept the momentum and leapt again, relying on my glamour to conceal my movements. I knew that they would be watching the back door and that I had to trust my glamour to turn their attention away from the rooftop and me.

  On the roof above the extension of the house I kept low until I could peek into the window identical to the one I had exited. My neck prickled as if there were cross-hairs trained on the back of my head. I ignored it, trusting to my magic to conceal me.

  The room was similarly furnished for a child – from the pink hairband on the unmade bed and the brushes and combs on the dresser, I'd guess it was for a girl. There was nothing in the file that mentioned children, and for most fey child-bearing was not an option, but this child could be from a different relationship, and was probably safely at school. Even so, I watched the room as I used my power to trip the window catch and quietly slide up the sash window.

  As soon as I raised the window I knew something was wrong. There was a smell I dimly recognised, a foetid odour of something bad. My sword was naked in my hand, its weight reassuring, before I slid across the window ledge and into the room. I moved quickly around to the partly open bedroom door and listened. From the stairwell came a shuffling shifting noise, then a dull thud, followed by a long low growl. My heart thumped in my chest – oh now I can hear my heart, I thought. Blackbird would be so pleased.

  I prayed that no one else would hear my thumping heart as I slid sideways along the wall above the stairs, watching the open stairwell for something ready to leap on me. Where was Tate when you needed him – wasn't he supposed to be watching my back? Something shifted on the floor below me, heavy but moving quietly. There was a creak, a shifting sliding noise like a sigh, then quiet.

  Then it occurred to me – I was the invader here. I was the one out of place. Whoever or whatever was downstairs probably knew this house well and knew every creak of the floorboards, whereas I was the one breaking in with a weapon in my hand. Maybe I should put it away – what did Blackbird say – to the man with a scythe, everything looks like grass?

  A low growl from downstairs changed my mind. If I was going to face whatever was down there, I wanted to do it with
a sword in my hand.

  I slid around and down the outside edge of the stairway, keeping my weight against the wall where the stairs would be less likely to creak. My movements were covered by the commotion at the front of the house, and I could see a first floor landing through the bannisters with three doors opening off it. There would be more stairs below these leading to the ground floor. The door to the rear room was pushed closed, the other two were ajar. I watched the two open doors as I reached the landing.

  At the end of the hallway was a coat-rack, with a couple of adult coats and a smaller pink coat hanging there. It reminded me of my own flat which I had lost. The lower stairs would lead down to a doorway, possibly shared with the neighbours or possibly a separate private access for the upstairs flat. The downstairs would be a self-contained flat of its own. The police were probably in there even now, trying to assess the situation upstairs.

  Quietly, I pushed the door to the rear room open. It was a compact kitchen with white units and a stainless steel sink, built out over the rear extension. A bottle of blackcurrant squash was open on the counter and two mugs were placed by a kettle. It looked normal.

  I moved towards the second door. The smell strengthened.

  Pushing the door to this room open I could see it had been furnished with a large double bed against the far wall. On the bed were two things – my eyes flickered between them. Standing on the bed was the huge black cat I encountered in the corridors under Porton Down, its black fur rippling in the orange-tinted light coming through the heavy drapes. At least I assumed it was the same one – there couldn't be two like that, surely? Lying on the sheets beneath it with her throat ripped out was a woman, her blood soaked into the sheets. Her dead eyes stared at the wall, uncaring, unknowing. It stared down at her and I could hear its soft pant timed with the ripples in its fur.

  Its head turned in one liquid movement and it caught me in its gaze, the gold flecks in its amber eyes catching the dim light. I held that gaze for too long; it launched at me, twisting in the air and I fell back, pulling the door closed after me. The cat hit the door and clawed a section out with an easy sweep that cracked the door back against the wall, booming through the building and leaving the door sagging from the bottom hinge. That gave me a moment to stagger around and back up the stairs before it slid round the door. It rippled to the bottom of the stairs and mounted the first steps, its hind legs bunching for a leap.

  I edged backwards up the steps keeping my eyes on it, brandishing the bright blade. It ignored the steel and readied for a spring, but then paused, looking back through the doorway to the bedroom. It licked its lips and sniffed again at the air. It was waiting for something – listening perhaps.

  Then it sprang, flinging itself at me with easy speed, claws braced wide, teeth bared for the kill. I tripped backward on the step, went down and lifted the sword-point in defence. I felt the blade jar in my hand, heard a scream that sliced its way into my brain, felt the blade ripped from my hand as the weight of the creature bore down on me. Its warm fur smothered my squeal of terror, its heavy scent enveloped me. I was beneath those lethal claws, utterly at its mercy.

  Then slowly light emerged. Heat radiated out through the fur, veins were outlined before my eyes. The shape twisted in front of me, a man-shaped cat, a cat-shaped man, it lifted its head and called again – a weaker wail against the dark. And then it turned to ashes and dissolved on top of me, leaving me coated in dry dust.

  I had killed it. A lucky hit, I must have pierced its heart. That's the thought that came to me until I tracked back through those last vital seconds. It had me at its mercy. I'd gone down. It could have eaten me alive if it wanted to. It had waited until I was ready.

  I lay sprawled on the stairs in stunned silence for long moments while I tried to understand what had just occurred. It made no sense. My hand sought and found the hilt of my sword and the reassuring weight brought me back to my senses just as the police started breaking in the door.

  "Police! We're coming in!"

  I sheathed the blade and pushed myself up, shedding clouds of fine ash from my clothes and slipping quickly back upstairs, heading for my exit through the open window in the back room. I went for the window and heard a tiny sound. I stopped. I could hear the commotion as the door to the flat finally gave way and the police entered below. They banged and shouted their way in. It would not take them long to find the body.

  Even so, I knelt down and looked under the bed. From beneath it a pair of wide round eyes stared back.

  "Hello." It was all I could think of to say.

  The eyes blinked.

  "What's your name?" I asked softly, acutely aware of the banging and thumping coming from downstairs.

  "Lucy," she said in a small voice. "Has it gone?"

  "Lucy, any moment now a lot of men are going to come in here and turn the place upside down looking for someone. Are you going to be OK?" What a stupid question.

  "If you came back upstairs," she said carefully, "then it must have gone. Is it safe to come out?"

  I wasn't sure whether it was or not. What would the police do with a small girl who was hiding under her bed? Would they look after her? The image of the woman downstairs came back to me and I realised that Lucy didn't know what had happened down there, or perhaps she did. Perhaps that was why she was under the bed.

  "Best stay there, I think. Someone will come and find you in a few minutes, but stay there for now. Let them run around."

  It came to me that I had left it too late, that the thumping sound coming up the second set of stairs was wearing size twelve boots. Making it out of the window and clean away was going to be difficult with fifteen stone of policeman romping in behind me. Instead I settled back into a corner by the dresser, strengthening the glamour around me, cloaking myself in a deep sense of unimportance and the ordinary.

  A red-faced police officer burst into the room, staring wildly about. He glanced at the bed, and at the window. He didn't glance at me. A colleague came in behind him.

  "Check the room, I'll check the window."

  While they searched the room, I concentrated on extending the pool of stillness that included me out to the wide-eyed girl under the bed. She watched me, her eyes growing wider still as the men yanked open doors, leaned out the windows, looked behind doors, searching everywhere except under the bed or in the corner.

  "He's gone out onto the roof. Call it in. Tell them to watch at the back. They may be able to see him from the houses behind. He'll have to come down somewhere."

  The burly officer that had come in first spoke rapidly into his lapel radio, explaining the situation. The other pulled down the window and closed the catch.

  "Seal off the bedroom downstairs until you're relieved. Don't let anyone in there, understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The two officers hurried back out, followed shortly by the noise of them thumping back downstairs. Outside the hubbub rose and fell like wind in the trees, but in the bedroom there was a deepening silence.

  Eventually Lucy spoke. "They didn't see you," she said.

  "No."

  "Are you invisible?"

  "Can you see me?" I asked her.

  "Yes."

  "Then no, I'm not invisible."

  "Why didn't they see you?"

  I was on the verge of asking her whether her mother told her not to ask too many questions, but then realised her mother was downstairs in the bedroom with her throat ripped out.

  "They didn't see me because I didn't want them to."

  "Oh," She said. "They're looking for Daddy, aren't they?"

  "Are they?" I asked her.

  "He brought the beast home with him, and now they're looking for him."

  "The beast is…"

  "The cat. The really big black one," she said.

  "You've seen it?"

  She nodded solemnly. "It follows him around, and goes wherever he goes. When he lived with us it used to come upstairs when it thought I was asleep and s
lip out of my window."

  "It came into your room?"

  She nodded again, slowly.

  "You must have been very brave, not to make a noise."

  She nodded again. "You have to be very quiet or it will know you're awake."

  I swallowed. I was about to say that it wouldn't be bothering her again, but then she might know very well what that meant.

  "It won't come up here now," I said.

  "I heard you fighting. Did you kill it?"

  Faced with that open-eyed stare I simply nodded. "Do you think you can be brave again, Lucy?"

  "Why?"

  "We need to get you downstairs and find you someone who will take care of you."

  "What about Mum?"

  "We need to get you downstairs. We can't go down your stairs because of the policeman, but I could carry you across the roof if you were very brave."