I slid open a drawer and withdrew a knife, and started to peel the apple in mid-air, unable to resist a cocky grin. Sharon laughed. When it was fully peeled I deposited the long ring of apple peel in the compost bin, dropped the knife in the sink, drew the apple into my waiting hand and took a bite. My mind relaxed and I felt a little light-headed, the way you do if you stand up too fast, but it passed quickly. ‘That was really good,’ said Sharon. ‘How did it feel?’
‘Not easy, exactly, but . . . OK?’ I crossed the room to the table and sat down, rotating the apple on the palm of my hand. ‘It’s usually big single movements, not lots of little precise ones. Even when we play with the Lego, I’m usually just concentrating on one piece at a time. It’s tricky . . . but I can do it.’
‘And how’s the flying?’ Her tongue may well have been in her cheek, considering yesterday’s escapades, but I didn’t rise to any bait.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Getting better, actually. Manoeuvring is a piece of cake these days. And my acceleration’s improved.’
‘Great. That’s great.’ We both laughed. ‘I’ve got to sort the rest of this paperwork,’ said Sharon. ‘All this admin we’ve been getting lately is nightmarish. Give me a giant evil worm to battle any day of the week.’
My ears pricked up at this. Sharon rarely mentioned her encounter with the Worm, her formative experience of London’s monstrous underside, and when she did it was with a quiet, haunted air. She seemed pretty casual about it now.
Maybe she’s getting over it.
That’s good. That means you get over it.
I asked Sharon if I could borrow a book, and after fifteen minutes perusing her extensive library I settled on The Time Traveller’s Wife. As soon as I’d read a few chapters I realised that it was probably not the best thing to be reading when you were feeling alone and frustrated and missing your girlfriend, but it was so good that I had to carry on. It kept me absorbed for the better part of the day, although I immediately dropped it when I heard Connor and Eddie return from their mission. ‘Anything?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Eddie. ‘With a side order of sweet FA, and a jack shit chaser.’
‘Some people had heard the name Morter Smith,’ said Connor, ‘but we couldn’t get any information about him.’
‘Which makes us think that he’s a major player,’ said Eddie, ‘and not someone you want to come face to face with.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘What kind of name is Morter anyway? Do you think he has brothers called Bayonette and Assault Rifle?’
‘It’s Morter with an E, apparently,’ said Connor. ‘The explosive kind is with an A.’
‘Is it?’ asked Eddie. ‘I thought it was always spelled with an E.’
Connor shook his head.
‘Well,’ said Eddie. ‘You learn something new every day, eh?’
‘Except for anything useful about my would-be arch-nemesis person,’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ said Connor. ‘Thing is, Eddie might have slightly overstated our underworld connections. A few minor-level shady characters, that’s about it. This Smith is on the top rung, and people are either too scared to spill, or too far below to actually know anything about him. That’s what’s worrying.’
‘So what now?’
‘Stay in,’ said Eddie. ‘Out of the line of fire. There’s no point in trying any other avenues today. We’ll see if Skank calls, but unless he does we’re going to leave it alone for now.’ For once, I decided not to argue.
I spent the rest of the day pacing, reading, and half-composing letters to Kloe. I never send letters, but sometimes it’s quite cleansing to write down thoughts. Darkness fell, and then it was dinner time, and then the house shut itself off. Maddeningly calm, maddeningly tidy. Nothing being done.
And there’s nothing you can do, I thought as I lay on my bed, still fully clothed. Nobody you can ask for information. I hated this helpless feeling. At the mercy of an invisible man, waiting around for him to make his next move, or for a non-existent source to give us some useless information. See above, re: nothing.
Well. There’s something.
I shouldn’t.
It’s been ages, though.
But if I get caught . . .
Sod it.
I got up and floated out into the garden, psychically closing the window behind me and touching down silently on the grass. I looked up at the sky. Took a deep glug of cool air. Closed my eyes.
Smiled.
Flying is the easiest, most beautiful thing. I simply sprang up from the ground, gravity went oh, OK then, well, see you later I guess and I kept going, quickly gaining speed, up past the buildings, up into the clear space beyond the fumes and fog and sirens and cars, up into my own world, so fast that even if someone had seen me, they’d never have registered that it was a person.
Except if they saw one of the videos, which statistically literally everyone in the world has now seen.
Except who cares.
Right now? Not me, not by any stretch of the imagination. I reached out to touch the moon, laughed like a child, turned and flew, stardust on my shoulders. Below me the city creaked and undulated, a mosaic of blinking lights and black shapes with great flowing grey canyons between them, and a plane roared overhead. I wondered if anybody saw me. Doubtful.
And again, a hearty ‘who cares’.
I flew on, past the highest spires in the city, over St Paul’s, garlanded by pillars and great concrete rings, until the sprawl started to fade, replaced by rolling shadowy hills and uneven fields. I had so much energy that I couldn’t even begin to worry about distance. I just flew, casting a brief Peter Pan shadow on sheds and barns, over villages made of paper and chalk and tiny farmhouses that glowed like gingerbread dwellings.
Speed of sound.
I chuckled.
Speed of light, mate.
I zoomed past a wind farm, its sails turning slowly and benevolently in the wind. A train snaked through the hills and I matched its course for a little while before letting it chunter on, and in the sudden fresh quiet I heard the bleating of animals and felt a sudden pang. That’s what home sounds like.
Theoretically, I could get there.
If I really wanted to go I would have done it by now.
Kloe is there.
Shut up and fly.
The smells of grass and silage and the odd car, and plumes of smoke rising from painted chimneys. A glistening river winding around the countryside like tears down an old man’s face, a grass-bearded face with gnarled tree trunk skin and frozen sap for eyes. I shed a few tears of my own but they dripped into my smile and were absorbed. Not even the distance between Kloe and me could spoil the sheer ecstasy of flight, and now, balancing every molecule in my body and brain, I turned a loop-the-loop, spiralled downwards and pulled up inches from the ground, so close that I could feel the long grass brushing my chin. I shot back up towards the moon, briefly taking my own breath away with the movement, my stomach lurching as though I were riding a plunging rollercoaster, and laughed that child’s laugh again.
How far is the sea?
I wonder.
Another burst of energy and I was roaring through the sky, parting reality with my hands and face, streamlined, a human bird preying on moonlight. I flew for at least an hour, stopping only for brief, playful indulgences, until I could see a distant, shimmering carpet through two grey-white teeth of cliff. I slowed down, and only now did I begin to realise how tired I was. I must have flown over a hundred miles, but I didn’t care. I touched down on the very edge of the cliff and stared.
The ocean at midnight. Vast, darkest blue, rippling like half-formed glass, shards of moon dancing on the foamy tips of the waves, cast like boomerangs from the orb in the sky. It was white now, away from the city, pure and haloed with silver, and the sea rushed gently, whispering to itself, one more instrument i
n the lunar-conducted symphony of wind and whalesong, the throbbing bass drum in my chest keeping bittersweet time. I was pretty sure there were no whales nearby, but I could still hear them.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, or how many tears fell, or how many times I wished that Kloe was sitting next to me watching this melancholy supernova. I didn’t want to know. It was almost perfection.
And almost is pretty good, to be fair.
Time is flying.
Something we both have in common.
Ha.
I don’t remember flying home. I don’t remember smells or sounds, or the shape of the countryside, or the taste and touch of the air. All I remember is being transferred softly and tenderly from the cool, sensual kiss of the sea to the warmth of my own bed, guided by the welcoming lights of peaceful dreams, all thoughts of enemies and anger and loneliness temporarily silenced. A chance of serenity.
I walked through the graveyard with murder tingling in my fingertips. Infinite tombstones loomed, some brand new, some crumbling and overgrown with creepers, their mourners either uncaring, forgetful or deceased themselves. Some were so huge that they ended beyond the sky. I didn’t recognise any names, and I counted that as a good thing. The sky itself was full of dead light, a few stars, an elderly moon. It was cold, but there was a kind of heat on the breeze, nothing to do with the weather, more a sense of something coming, a promise. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Somewhere among the tombstones, something moved. A mass, human but not, a temporary mouth flickering in its great head. I knew who that was. I saw him regularly.
Tonight, though, he was keeping his distance.
‘She’s finally asleep.’ Kloe was kneeling next to a cradle full of blankets, a tiny shape breathing regularly underneath. I smiled and knelt down next to her, put my arm around her slender shoulders.
‘Well done. She’s been pretty restless lately.’
Kloe nodded. ‘I wonder why.’
‘It’s the weather.’
‘Probably.’ Kloe looked up at me, and although she was smiling her eyes were wet. ‘What’s going to happen when they take her?’
‘No-one’s going to take her.’ I pulled her into an embrace. ‘She’s ours, and I will protect her and you forever.’
‘You might not be around forever.’
‘You’ll never be alone. I promise.’ It was a real promise, but Kloe laughed.
‘You should give me more credit,’ she said.
‘I should.’
She shrugged and turned away. The regular, fragile breathing had stopped. I pulled the blankets aside but the cradle was empty, and Kloe was wandering off into the mist. The cradle was sitting on a plot of soil with a fresh, blank tombstone at the end, and I started digging and clawing at the ground, screaming silently, but every time I ripped away a chunk, fresh bloodied dirt oozed into its place. My own tears seemed to be hardening the earth, and when I looked up at the tombstone again I saw letters beginning to appear. The first hadn’t quite formed, but I knew what it was going to be, it was—
no—
no—
NO—
‘NO!’
I woke up, of course, hot and sweaty and anxious and breathing hard and heavy, my heart pumping with such brutality that it shook my chest. My skin tingled and my fingers trembled, and it took nearly a minute for the panic to subside, lying there, willing myself into calmness. Slow down. Quiet. Still. A dream like any other. Over-active worry gland, plus trauma, plus your own particularly messed-up imagination, plus deep sleep. Nothing to worry about.
Eventually my breathing became regular and I was no longer aware of my heartbeat, but despite the cold outside I felt weak with heat. I stared at the ceiling for hours, afraid to close my eyes again, trying not to think about the worst possible things, wishing I wasn’t alone.
So much for serenity.
Chapter Five
I SLEPT UNTIL ALMOST one the next day and woke feeling uneasy; an odd mixture of groggy and wired.
Showering didn’t help, and when I went downstairs there was nobody there, just a note from Sharon saying she’d be back from work around four. I slumped down at the table and made coffee and cereal with my mind, amusing myself by marching the caffetiere and the Bran Flakes box around on the counter as though possessed.
Simple things.
Bored of rattling around sulking, I decided to make the most of having the house to myself and plugged my laptop into the sound system in the living room. While Skank was a big fan of vinyl, his digital collection was also fearsome, and I’d been regularly, greedily raiding it for new and peculiar delights. My own musical experience had been pretty much exclusively confined to stuff with guitars, but I’d now discovered that I really liked weird noises.
I closed the curtains, cranked up some Aphex Twin and went a bit nuts with my powers, standing on the ceiling, rearranging the furniture, juggling pictures and books. After a while I decided to go all out and turn the whole room upside-down, The Twits-style, moving the chairs, sofa, rugs, lamps and hi-fi up to the ceiling, an inverted mirror image of the room it had been. I sat on the upside-down sofa, positioned my laptop and snapped a picture, which I then sent to Eddie’s phone with a message saying this is what happens when you make me stay at home. He replied with a smiley face, and although I usually found emoticons and text speak unreasonably irritating, today it was quite nice.
I replaced the furniture in its usual formation (after hoovering some of those hard to reach corners), made some coffee and decided to try a bit of internet detective work. After all, I had multiple worlds at my fingertips. Neither Connor nor Eddie had really embraced this oh-so-new-except-it’s-really-not frontier, and although Skank had probably already done some electronic investigating for them I figured it was worth a try. I’d familiarised myself with a number of strange blogs in the last year or so, not just Weird, Sister. Maybe there’d be something out there.
Morter Smith, unsurprisingly, yielded no useful search results. In fact, there were no recorded instances whatsoever of Morter being used as a first name. A surname, here and there, although it wasn’t common.
Worth a shot.
I dug around a few blogs and forums, seeing if there was anything Angel Group-related, and found a couple of discussions of my new viral video showcase. People seemed overwhelmingly unimpressed with the special effects, which gave me a chuckle, but when I logged on to Weird, Sister I found a detailed post analysing the video next to what seemed to be a picture of me flying across the city at night, probably back when I’d first named myself London’s resident superhero. They were taking it seriously. Luckily my face wasn’t visible, but still . . . someone was watching.
I have a doubleplusbad feeling about this.
‘Stanly?’ I jumped. Sharon’s voice. ‘I’m home!’
‘Hi!’ I hurriedly logged off and headed downstairs. She was making coffee, looking tired but smiley in her pale blue scrubs. ‘Long shift?’ I asked.
‘Long but fairly tedious, which was actually a nice change of pace. How’s your day been?’
‘Fine. Quite nice to be alone, actually.’
‘You haven’t been,’ said Sharon. ‘Eddie’s been watching the house all day.’
‘You what?’
‘He’s gone now.’ Sharon smiled at my indignant face. ‘Figured you’d want a bit of space, but he was pretty insistent about not leaving you alone to be possibly murdered.’ She was feigning lightness, but I knew she was bothered by the possibility and it took the wind out of my frustrated sails. We sat and had coffee, and after allowing the companionable silence to stretch out a bit I decided to ask a question that I’d never felt able to ask before. ‘Sharon . . . what was the Worm like?’
Her hand stopped mid-way to her mouth, and her cup shook a little. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I know it was . . . bad. I just . . .’
‘It’s
OK.’ She put the cup down very carefully. ‘I can talk about it. I just prefer not to, generally. That’s all.’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘No, really, it’s fine.’ She sipped her coffee, as though steeling herself. ‘We’re all monster-killers here.’ The grim smile accompanying her words chilled me. It wasn’t an expression you should ever have to see on the face of someone you care about. I’ve seen stuff, it said. And all you can do is get on with it. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘like I told you before, I was sixteen . . . no, actually, seventeen at that point. Just. And Freeman . . .’ She stopped again. I knew why. Mr Freeman had appeared out of nowhere one day when I was first in London and kept re-appearing at random convenient points, giving me lectures and coded information, hardly any of which ended up being of any use to me. He kept alluding to the future, to my power, and I’d eventually learned that he was a veteran liar, a professional manipulator of impressionable minds who singled out people with powers – like Sharon, Connor and Eddie – and fooled them into doing his dirty work. Finally, when he’d brought us before the Angel Group for a singularly confusing confrontation, I’d seen him shot dead in cold blood on his boss’s orders. I could see him with perfect clarity now, lying on the polished floor, oozing life. I can’t pretend to have liked him, but he hadn’t deserved that.
‘Anyway,’ said Sharon. ‘I’d heard stories about some creature living in the sewers, attacking people. Eating them. Obviously I didn’t believe it, not until Freeman told me it was true . . . and I don’t even know why I believed him. It’s not like he was particularly likeable or trustworthy. I was naïve, I suppose. He told me that I had a duty to use my powers for good, and that if I killed this monster I would be under some kind of protection. That’s exactly what he said to Connor and Eddie too, and I’m pretty sure it was a lie . . . although we are still here, so . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway. I didn’t know any of that at the time, so down I went. Down a manhole, down a ladder, into the darkness. The smell was so disgusting I almost threw up immediately. I managed to force myself to get used to it, though. Had to. I just remember walking and thinking what the hell am I doing down here, I don’t know the first thing about fighting, I barely even understand my powers. I knew that I could do things, but I’d . . . I’d had problems. So I’d been taking as much rubbish as I could get my hands on, thinking I could suppress the power. I never took drugs again after that trip down the sewer, incidentally.’ She smiled the rueful smile of an ex-wild child, and took a sip of coffee. ‘So I was walking, and suddenly I felt this force, this . . . alien presence. Completely impenetrable. And a second later there was this horrible scream. Like metal being scraped along metal. I almost fainted on the spot. And then it appeared.’
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