City of Halves

by Lucy Inglis

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I haven’t known her long.’

  He shook his head, staring at the broken wooden shards in his hand. ‘I just don’t know where she might be. I know it’s not always easy, living with me. I work her too hard. And you know that her and my missus don’t get on. Things . . . money, it’s been tough lately.’

  Lily said nothing.

  He sighed. ‘If she gets in touch, will you tell her to come home?’

  ‘Of course I will. I’d better go now.’ Lily gestured over her shoulder with her thumb.

  He nodded, his shoulders sagging.

  Lily, seeing Regan gone from the archway, walked back out of the market. He fell into step beside her after fifty yards. He had a large bacon sandwich in a paper wrapper.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. But at least we know her name. Vicky Shadbolt.’ Lily got out her phone and launched the Facebook app.

  ‘I told you, they won’t believe you,’ he said. ‘Here. Eat this.’

  ‘I’m not hungry. And I’m checking something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vicky’s Facebook.’

  ‘Facewhat?’

  ‘Everyone knows what Facebook is. Don’t pretend.’ She paused to thumb in a search for Vicky. Regan looked over her shoulder.

  ‘Well, her profile’s open. That means anyone can see it. So there won’t be anything interesting on it unless she has no concept of privacy at all. She hasn’t updated her status since yesterday afternoon, when she said she was babysitting for a neighbour. And there’s nothing to say she’s seeing anyone. Her newsfeed looks pretty average too.’

  ‘Newsfeed?’

  ‘It’s like a rolling bulletin of what’s happening with your friends. Photos, updates, locations.’

  He studied the screen with interest, watching how Lily operated it.

  ‘But it’ll help me find her other profiles, on messaging apps and stuff like that. The places she really hangs out.’ Lily spoke almost as if to herself.

  Regan looked lost.

  ‘You don’t have this?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t go in for technology much.’ Reaching over her shoulder, he held his finger over the phone.

  Lily held it up slightly. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a human thing.’ He tapped on a photo of Vicky.

  ‘Is that why you haven’t got electricity?’

  ‘I’ve got it in theory, just no one’s paid the bills in ten years, so in practice it doesn’t work so well.’

  ‘Why don’t you pay the bill?’

  ‘First, I want to attract as little attention as possible, and, second, my line of work isn’t what anyone would call lucrative.’ Lily could feel his chest against her shoulder. She shifted slightly, putting an inch of space between them. He shook his head in wonder. ‘So much information. It’s like a playground for deviants. I hope you’re not on this.’ He held out the sandwich. ‘You need to eat. Your body will be using a lot of calories to repair itself, and it’s getting cold again.’

  Lily frowned at him, but she took it and took a bite. ‘Of course I’m on it. Everyone is. Unless you’re a conspiracy nutter. You have to be a bit careful with it, but my profile’s private. Only my friends can see it.’ And anyone with basic hacking skills, but still . . .

  ‘Got a lot of friends?’

  She put her phone away and carried on eating. ‘Yes. Why? How many have you got?’

  ‘None. Which is exactly the way I like it.’

  She wrinkled her nose, then chewed and swallowed quickly. ‘Why would anyone want to have no friends?’

  ‘Easier,’ he said, turning to leave the market.

  ‘Where are we going now?’

  ‘We are not going anywhere. You are going home.’

  ‘There are about three people on the planet who can tell me what to do. You’re not one of them.’

  He glanced down at her, as she kept pace by his side. He almost smiled. ‘I bet they’re all human, though. And they didn’t just save your life.’

  Lily thought about it, then shrugged. ‘I suppose you’ve got a point. So, explain to me, then, about the Eldritche.’

  He glanced down at her. Then he took a breath. ‘You know how there’s this idea of a balance in the universe?’ He lifted his hands and weighed them against each other like scales.

  Lily put her fingers in front of her full mouth before she spoke. ‘Like Buddhists?’

  ‘A little. Well, it’s there in our world too. There are different types of Eldritche, three main ones: earth, water and air. To your lot, they’re folklore, fairy stories, but many are just ordinary people leading ordinary lives. However, there are types of Eldritche who embody darkness, entropy. We call them the Chaos. They take different forms, but they’re deadly and you can’t reason with them. London is a magnet for them.’

  ‘Why?’

  He blew out a big breath. ‘That’s something of a mystery. None of us really know. Other cities, they get one or two straying in. But London, it draws them. We think there must have been some event, sometime in the past, that knocked out the balance. But what it was, and how to fix it . . . that knowledge has been lost.’

  ‘You mean, like chaos theory and the butterfly effect? Where one tiny incident creates some huge change further down the line?’ She held out the sandwich.

  He took it, took a bite, and nodded. ‘Exactly that. And for some reason, there’s more of them than ever recently.’

  ‘Why? I mean, why are there more of them?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I need to find out. And fast. Something is upsetting the balance even more, and whatever it is, it’s creating some kind of large-scale negativity. That’s what’s bringing more Chaos, accelerating it. And more types than ever too. Things I’ve never seen.’ He saw her looking at him. ‘It’s my job to keep them out. Or, if they get in, to track them down and deal with them.’ He handed the sandwich back.

  Lily thought back to the dead bandogge in the yard. She shuddered, food forgotten. ‘Like you did today?’

  He lifted a shoulder. ‘Not sure what other way there is.’

  She was silent for a minute. ‘So that’s what you meant, about security?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And you said it was a family business.’

  ‘Yes. My father did it before me. And his father before him.’ He circled his finger as if winding back through time, and took the last piece of the sandwich she held out.

  ‘There aren’t any others to help?’

  He shrugged. ‘Usually I don’t need help. The old gates are strong enough to keep most of them out, and I’m just dealing with one or two a night, but—’

  ‘Gates?’

  ‘Yes. The City of London has seven gates. Aldgate—’

  ‘—Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate, Newgate, Bishopsgate and Ludgate,’ Lily interrupted, putting the empty wrapper in a litter bin. ‘The gates in London Wall. I know. And I know that the City of London’s had a wall around it since the Romans, and they stopped repairing it a couple of hundred years ago. Then bits of it got bombed in the war, but there’s lots of it still around in places. Dad and I walk it sometimes on weekends.’

  He looked impressed, pausing at the top of the flight of steps that cut through from Carter Lane to Blackfriars Bridge Road.

  ‘But the gates are just symbolic now,’ Lily said, ‘aren’t they?’

  He nodded. ‘But that’s all they need to be. The barrier of the Wall is still, mostly, intact. Although it’s weaker in some places than others.’

  ‘Like a magic barrier?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in it?’ he teased.

  ‘Well. . .’

  ‘I think it’s more like consecrated ground, for our kind. Except it’s wearing off, starting to fail.’

  ‘So you go out at night and . . .’ Lily looked dubious.

  ‘Search on the streets, and in the subways and the tunnels and – the bit I really enjoy,’ he pulled a face, ‘the sewers around the Wall –
for anything that shouldn’t be there, for the things that have managed to get through the gates, or are trying to.’

  ‘Security?’ She raised an eyebrow. He shrugged, and she burst out laughing. ‘Security. Now I get it.’

  ‘I guard the Wall, and between me and the gates, the things that should stay out usually do. But lately, things have been slipping through. Hiding out in the City, causing trouble.’

  ‘Trouble like what?’

  ‘Accidents, deaths, illness. Chaos. But there are ways to predict what they’ll do. Sets of behaviour particular to each creature.’

  ‘Okay.’ Lily nodded slowly.

  ‘That a bandogge would end up in my yard, well, that’s not right. They’re night creatures. They stay in the shadows, wait until you’re in a dim alleyway after dark and rush you. It shouldn’t have just walked in there in daylight.’

  ‘It shouldn’t?’

  ‘It shouldn’t, no. It was particularly powerful, if it was prepared to come into the Rookery.’

  ‘Why?’

  They walked to the end of the street and turned towards the bridge. ‘Two reasons. First, the Chaos can sense it when I’m around. And they don’t like it. They might be crazy, but they don’t actively court suicide. Second, certain places are like sanctuaries. They can be anywhere, but once we find them, we tend to stay there. Usually there’s a lot of gates, doors or thresholds to cross. The Rookery is one: old coaching inn, built around a central space, so all entrances have an outer and inner door. Plus it’s my home. Big deterrent. That the dogge wanted you enough to cross both thresholds is a very bad sign.’

  There was the bus stop, with a string of people waiting now, checking their phones, listening to music. Red buses trundled past in both directions.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘One characteristic of bandogges is that they’re often attracted to a focus. To things people really want to find.’ He glanced down at her.

  Lily hooked her thumbnail behind her front teeth. ‘Hmn. So who’s looking for you?’

  There was a pause, just a beat too long. ‘Me?’

  She looked up at him. ‘Well, no one’s looking for me, are they?’

  Cabs and white vans sat at the lights, exhausts filling the cold air with fumes. The sky was darkening.

  ‘I think I should take you home,’ he said at last.

  ‘You aren’t taking me anywhere.’

  They stood, staring at each other, stubborn jaws set. Lily spoke first. ‘Okay, I’ll go home. If you’ll tell me how to get in touch with Stedman.’

  He sighed. ‘Don’t start—’

  ‘I need to find him.’

  ‘And I’m not telling you where he is. The Eldritche need fake papers too.’

  ‘So you do know him!’ Lily exclaimed.

  He sighed. ‘Tell me how you tracked him to me.’

  ‘The CCTV in your alley. I’ve seen him visit the Rookery.’

  He shook his head, his mouth thinning in a hard line. ‘That camera . . .’

  ‘Well, you broke it, so you don’t need to worry about it now. Until they replace it.’

  ‘And you were using it to spy on me?’ His eyes narrowed.

  ‘No, I was looking for Harris Stedman,’ she explained, as if to a child.

  ‘And I can’t help you.’

  ‘You mean you won’t.’

  ‘Whatever. He’s too valuable to my people for me to get him arrested. Like I said, the Eldritche all need papers. We don’t get them handed out to us like your mob.’

  ‘But Mary Kalhuna will be deported if you don’t tell me where he is! She’ll be back at the mercy of the people who trafficked her in the first place! We need to prove that she was being coerced to commit crime. They’re the criminals, not her. And to prove it we need to have all the evidence that she was trafficked.’

  ‘I don’t do human problems, I told you.’

  ‘I’ve got news for you. You’ve got a human problem.’ Lily pointed to herself.

  Regan looked away. ‘What do humans do when girls won’t do as they’re told?’

  ‘They compromise.’

  ‘That’s not in my make-up.’

  Lily lifted her chin. ‘Well, you’ll have to learn.’

  His eyebrow quirked up. ‘I will, will I?’

  ‘Yes. Seeing as we’re working together.’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. No, no, no. I don’t do compromise and I don’t do coworkers. Particularly not coworkers who are as breakable as you.’

  Lily’s chin lifted. ‘I’m stronger than I look. I work out.’

  He bit the inside of his cheek, trying not to laugh.

  She put her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t be patronising.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, looking her up and down. ‘I should check out this construction site.’

  They fell into step. Lily shifted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Anything that shouldn’t be there.’

  On a plot just off Ludgate Hill they came to a blue-painted wooden hoarding with a Corporation of London planning permission sign. They walked around it until they found the entrance down a surprisingly empty side street. Despite it being the middle of a working day, the gates to the site were chained shut. Through the metal grille, they could see a building site stretching down many levels into the earth, drooping steel wires and crumbling rubble around the edges. On makeshift pathways and roads beneath them cranes and diggers stood silent and empty. Cameras on metal poles stood inside the hoardings, and signs tacked to the boards read DANGER – DEEP EXCAVATION.

  ‘Must cost a lot for all this to do nothing,’ Lily said.

  Regan glanced around, took the chain in both hands and twisted in opposite directions. It broke with a loud squeal then a crack, the links falling apart. Lily’s eyes widened.

  ‘Let’s see if it really is nothing,’ he said as he lifted his boot and aimed a kick at the base of the gate, sending it crashing back on its thick hinges.

  He strode down the dirt track towards the centre of the site, coat flowing out behind him. A redundant crane loomed overhead and vapour trails from the City Airport jets criss-crossed the frozen sky. Lily ran after him, skipping over the broken ground. He stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Yet.’ His chin lifted and he sniffed the air. The sky was darkening dramatically now. Lily knew the City had its own microclimate and that strange weather was nothing unusual, but she watched the rapidly blackening clouds with unease.

  ‘Get behind me.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘This – it’s called the gathering dark. It means there’s something here. Do it, now.’

  Lily came to stand behind him. The distant wail of a police car touched her ears. A sudden breeze picked up, whipping dust and stones into tiny funnels that lifted and dropped all around them. A tarpaulin covering a pile of scaffolding began to snap as the wind strengthened. The siren grew louder, approaching fast from the south.

  ‘Whatever happens, stay with me.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ Lily said, alarmed.

  The whirlwind of dust and stones picked up around them. The wailing grew louder. Not a police siren. Couldn’t be, not that loud. It was so loud it was hurting her ears, stabbing like knitting needles. Lily looked up towards the street. Then, above the hoarding, she saw it.

  A gathering in the air, almost solidifying, but not quite. It slid through the air, then gathered again on the cab of a JCB. Lily tried to make out what it was, but it evaporated again just as quickly as it had appeared. The wail had become deafening.

  ‘There, on the cab,’ she shouted. ‘There was—’

  ‘I got it,’ he hollered back over the noise.

  Lily’s heart ached at the sound. The wind whipped her hair across her face. As she pushed strands of it from her eyes, a woman materialised in front of Regan. She wore a filthy white dress. Her knees and hands were grazed and bleeding, bloodstains spreading across her clothes as Lil
y watched. She stretched out her hands towards them. The terrible keening that seemed to come from the centre of the woman’s body made Lily’s breastbone vibrate, and tears sprang to her eyes, spilling on to her cheeks. It felt as if her heart would break.

  ‘Cover your ears,’ Regan shouted, not taking his eyes from the woman.

  Lily put her hands over her ears, but the noise still wrenched at her insides. She began to sob. The woman came closer, her hands cupped as if begging. Suddenly, her fingers began to lengthen into claws and her face sharpened. Her mouth distorted, drawing back, and her nose became a wicked beak, her eyes deep pits surrounded by scales. Lily stepped back in horror.

  The creature leapt at Regan, clawing wildly at his face. The dust and stones enveloped them, spattering against Lily’s clothes, rushing at her tear-wet eyes. She watched as the two of them fought, trading lethal blows. As soon as Regan caught hold of the woman, she evaporated, then re-materialised, striking at his face with her talons. Then she was on the ground, on her knees, her face a woman’s again.

  Regan stood over her, his fist clamped tightly in her long, straggling hair. The wailing changed pitch, falling to a thin pleading. Her bloodied hands were held out for mercy. Lily watched in horror as Regan drew back his fist, punched straight into her chest and pulled out the running red lump of her heart.

  Lily scrambled for the gate, legs pumping not with blood, but adrenalin. She ran out on to the hill and pelted for home, throwing herself across the traffic at Ludgate Circus and into the back streets. Her feet banged against the pavement, untrustworthy with fear. As she cut into the back alley behind St Bride’s Church, next to the graveyard, something stepped out and hit her so hard it winded her.

  Regan caught her as if he’d been waiting in the alley. She collided with his concrete body, momentum slamming her up against him as his arms closed around her. ‘Stop,’ he said, not even out of breath. ‘It’s okay, it’s just me.’

  Lily clung to him. The blood rushed in her ears but his heart thudded steadily, as if nothing at all had happened. As if he hadn’t just killed that creature.

  ‘Lily?’

  ‘What . . . was that?’ She struggled to get the words out.

  ‘Banshee. Must have got past me at Ludgate last night. Probably hiding out in there until nightfall.’ He set her on her feet, pushing her away gently.