But I’ll save it anyway, ’cos I’m the big damn hero.
I went on foot for a while – or glided along at foot level, at least – keeping to the shadows, hat pulled down, smelly coat wrapped around me. One thing I did notice was that far more cars seemed to be heading away from London than into it. Made sense, and suited my purposes. If more monsters were coming, and Azathoth knew what else, then the fewer civilians around the better. I flexed my fists in my pockets, practically feeling power dancing between my fingers. I had my (metaphorical) sneaky hat on, fully prepared to stealth it up, but if push came to shove, and shove came to more shoving, and more shoving came to the application of some kind of mental attack, then so be it.
The fact that I wasn’t hearing many helicopters made me feel better. Hopefully I could bank on the Angel Group underestimating my flying abilities. I could see a roadblock up ahead, with cars and a large black truck that might have been the police but smelled (metaphorically) like something else. They were stopping anyone who came through.
Right.
Up, up and away.
It was freezing, but I forced myself to go as high as I could, squinting, icy shafts of wind bypassing my clothes as though they weren’t even there. I gritted my teeth and barrelled forward as fast as possible, and quickly the city started to form properly beneath me, like the endless grey pock-marked ridges and multi-coloured eyes of some bizarre beast. I had to go a bit lower to get my bearings, then shot back up, pushing the limit of my personal altitude.
First stop: Connor and Sharon’s. I knew the street from high, high above, and positioned myself as exactly as I could. No way of making out any vehicles from here.
Right. Let’s do this quickly—
I became aware of the buzzing seconds before the bullets, and instinctively motored in the opposite direction, turning my body as I moved and flying backwards so I could see behind me. Something was chasing me, a black shape, maybe as long as a car but much sleeker, and it was having no trouble gaining air on me.
What the . . .
Drone?
Balls. So much for them underestimating my flying abilities.
It had stopped firing when I headed away, but as soon as it had me in its sights again it was back on the attack, and I thought a bubble around myself, deflecting its projectiles, which burned bright and brief against the sky like dying fireflies. I channelled as much as I could into my flight, thinking past any idea of restriction, but the thing wasn’t giving up. I tried loop-the-looping, I tried abrupt changes of direction that jarred my whole body, but each time the thing corrected its course infuriatingly rapidly and came right back at me. Even if I could defend myself against its bullets, I wasn’t going to outrun the cursed thing.
Fine.
POP.
For some reason – possibly anxiety, or possibly the fact that it’s difficult to concentrate on a sustained psychic attack when you’re being chased through the sky at high speed by a drone – the blast was not super-effective, and while the drone wavered as though it had been clonked by something, it barely slowed down.
POP.
BURST.
BURST BURST BURST!
It still wasn’t working, so I thought laterally.
SNAP!
The drone broke in half at the centre and the two halves fell away, hissing and sparking. I quickly grabbed them with my mind, not wanting them to fall on the city. We were high up, and they could do a lot of damage. I slowed down and sat in the air, staring at the broken drone and listening out for more. I was pretty sure I could hear the buzzing again, elsewhere; it was further away but definitely present. Had this one sent a message? Would more be coming? I had no way of knowing how many of the bastard things were in the sky, or if this one had been piloted towards me or flown by itself. If there was a camera attached, it was integrated too subtly into the design for me to make out, but it seemed likely that there was one, meaning that they might already know exactly what I looked like. Which would render my disguise both smelly and pointless. At any rate, flying was now going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Right. Time to go down.
I could see the way back towards Connor and Sharon’s, having regained my bearings. Taking a deep breath, and keeping the bits of drone safely in my wake, I angled myself towards my destination and punched it, eyes locked. This was going to require serious control. I couldn’t afford to approach slowly, especially if there were more happy sky friends about. The street came rushing towards me, from a faraway toy display to a miniature film set to reality, and I adjusted my trajectory minutely, staying on target, and now I could see that there was indeed a police car parked outside the house, as well as one of those black trucks, and I kept going, kept going, kept going, stay on target, stay on target, right a bit, left a bit, right, now slow slow slow slow SLOW DOWN—
—and I stopped, my face millimetres away from Connor and Sharon’s roof. I flattened myself against it and stayed there for a minute, listening out. No voices. Hopefully I hadn’t been seen. Hovering an inch above the roof I moved silently to the edge, risking a peek into the garden. Nobody there, and no lights on in the house. I placed the bits of drone on the grass, taking care not to make a sound, and quickly and delicately opened my bedroom window, fighting to keep my heartbeat under control. Entrance secure, I flew into my room and closed the window behind me. I decided not to let my feet touch the floor, to maintain stealthiness, and levitated out of my room and into the hall like a ghost. I almost wanted to bump into someone, to see the look on their face when this tramp-like figure came hovering out of the darkness. There were no lights on downstairs either, although from the top of the stairs I could see that the front door was slightly open, the edges chipped and torn, a line of police tape across the threshold. It made me shake with anger. It wasn’t our house any more.
Their house, you mean.
Whatever.
I floated into Connor and Sharon’s bedroom. I’d only been in there once, and it had been immaculate, but now there were chairs overturned on the floor, and their drawers had been ripped open. My eyes fell on the painting of the geisha girl next to the bookcase. It was lovely, pale and impressionistic but unmistakably a geisha. I heard Connor’s voice. ‘I’ve got plenty of stuff saved up at home for a rainy day.’
I carefully moved the painting away from the wall, placed it softly on the bed and regarded the safe. I wondered if he’d had time to take his rainy-day stuff with him.
Only one way to find out. Let’s hope this wasn’t a wasted trip.
It was hard to know how much of this had been lurking at the back of my mind and how much was occurring to me on the spot, but the fact that it required a combination lock that I didn’t know just didn’t seem like much of an obstacle. I simply stared at the lock for a long time, trying to drain away the swirl of thoughts and leave just the pure, quiet image of the device, the knob, the numbers. I wonder . . .
I could see the safe floating in blackness, three-dimensional, obvious. It had subtleties, but so does everything, and all subtleties are visible and understandable and breakable if you look deep enough. You just need the quiet of thinking.
And psychic powers help too.
Breathing regularly and softly, I managed to burrow inside the lock with my mind. I could see how it worked, every tiny detail in its machinery, what made it tick, and slowly, inexorably, I could turn things in the correct fashion to unlock it. It was like putting an invisible thread through the eye of the tiniest needle, but somehow I knew that I could do it. Turn. Click. Back. Click. See the mechanism. Understand it. Bypass it. Just a mechanism. I could manipulate it, see its insides and outsides and everything that made it real, that gave it a purpose. It was a means to an end. It was designed for this. You just needed to see the truth of the mechanism.
Just a mechanism.
Just a mechanism.
Just a—
Click.
Ha. Genie. In. A. BOTTLE.
The safe was deep and contained a few lethal-looking items: two handguns, a sawn-off shotgun and a fair wedge of corresponding ammunition. There were also holsters for the handguns and a strap for the shotgun. Not for the first time I wondered where the hell Skank got hold of this stuff . . . and why Connor had kept it.
A rainy day.
Like those days when it’s raining monsters and evil corporations and police and stuff.
That thought made me shudder. I was not killing police. I didn’t even want to hurt any police. Angel Group soldiers were one thing, I had to assume they knew at least something about the company’s shady dealings, but police? Guys doing jobs. In fact, guys being kept from doing jobs, important jobs, probably on the basis of mysterious orders from unaccountable people.
Push + shove = . . .
I attached the holsters to my belt, slid the handguns into them, strapped the shotgun around my neck and hung it inside my coat, quick and quiet, almost on autopilot, not totally convinced that I was even doing what I was doing, let alone that it was remotely a good thing. As I closed up the safe I had a vivid flashback of myself as a child playing Duplo with my mother, watching Mary Poppins, drinking apple juice, munching biscuits, leaving colourful bricks sticky with spilled juice and careless crumbs. I hated to think what my mother would say if she saw me loading up on guns.
Load up on guns, bring your friends . . .
Find your friends.
And hopefully don’t shoot anybody.
I put the ammunition in my rucksack and replaced the painting, feeling weighed down both physically and mentally. I didn’t like this.
Create a Facebook profile and write a status, then.
And make like a tree, butthead.
I exited swiftly over the fence at the bottom of the garden and made a quick calculation. It made sense to keep low rather than risk another stealth dive-bomb manoeuvre – I wasn’t in a hurry to encounter another drone. 110th Street was next on my list of destinations and I used back streets, hiding behind every wall and car, walking fast when necessary, flying close to the ground where possible. It was strange, and not just because I wasn’t used to flying at this level. It no longer felt free. I felt strangled, zipping behind cover at every opportunity in case I was seen, and while there were still quite a few pedestrians about, those I saw hurried with scared looks on their faces, checking behind them more times than seemed necessary, as if they knew they shouldn’t be outside. Some glanced pensively towards the sky, listening out for that tell-tale buzzing, and every now and then I heard a melancholy caw from a dark-feathered bird. It sounded downright alien against such a deafening, oppressive hush, a violation of empty space. Even the general city noise seemed dull, and the wind had sewn up its mouth in fear rather than risk being noticed.
Balls to this. In a big way.
There were police cars and black trucks parked near 110th Street, so I didn’t even bother exploring it, just zipped off, assumed a safe distance and tried to phone my friends again. Still nothing. At this point, there was only one place left to try.
Time for another fly?
No. Too risky. If there are more things up there . . .
There were. Definitely. I could hear them in the distance. Once or twice I was pretty sure I saw one zipping through the air. I wondered what people thought about it.
Come on, let’s get walking.
It took a long time to get to Blue Harvest, and although there were no guards present the club was closed. Eddie would definitely have warned Hannah . . .
They might not even know about the club, though. Despite the nagging feeling that my friends were going to have found somewhere new to hide, somewhere that even I didn’t know about, I figured I might as well try inside. Apart from anything else, I was uncomfortably aware that I was already running out of places to look, and I wanted to put that moment off for as long as possible. I thought the door unlocked and slipped in, using my phone to illuminate the walls while I found the light switches. They had dimmers, so I kept them low. Didn’t want to attract too much attention, but I did quite fancy being able to see.
There was nothing that indicated any kind of struggle. No marks on the doors, and the place looked tidy. I walked slowly around the main room, tracing my finger over the smooth, cold tables, taking a moment over the pictures of those who had died in the shootings last year. The sound of bullets wasn’t nearly as foreign now as it had been back then, when I’d never even heard someone fire a gun at a duck shoot, let alone try to kill each other with automatic weapons.
And now you’re carrying some.
Except . . . are these automatic?
Note to self: draft letter to NRA asking if these are automatic.
Haha, you so funny.
Hannah had recently converted the cellar into a sort of chill-out space that was open during the day, where people could drink and play pool and listen to the jukebox. It was accessible via the hall at the back of the main room, and I headed down there, already knowing there’d be no-one about. Sure enough, there was no-one about. Crap. I helped myself to a beer and sat on the pool table, thinking. Last time I’d been here, Kloe had been visiting. We’d come to watch a band called The Other Mother, a supremely sexy group of hyper-stylised are-they-even-humans who played weird dark cello-driven funk. It had been an amazing night.
I drank my beer and tried to work out what I should do. It was getting on now,and I’d still not had a call or anything, and while it made sense to continue searching in the dark, when it was easier to hide, my options were kind of limited. I hadn’t the faintest idea where to look. I didn’t even know where Nailah lived, and she wasn’t answering her phone.
Although . . .
I checked in my wallet and grinned, because what I did have was the address that Nailah had given me. Lauren’s. The new empowered girl.
Seemed as good a time as any to meet a new super-person.
I jogged back upstairs, stepped into the main room and froze. At the other end of the room, in the doorway, stood a boy and a dog. The boy was about my age, pale, with messy blonde-brown hair, and he wore a heavy green coat over a red hoody, jeans and trainers. The dog was, I guessed, a Doberman, and it was big. Not as big as the blue one, by any means, but by normal dog standards . . . big. I tried a wave. ‘Um, hi,’ I said.
The dog offered a bark. The boy didn’t say anything. His expression was odd, slightly confrontational yet . . . sad? Reluctant? Scared? I frowned. He was freaking me out more than the dog, to be honest. ‘You all right?’ I tried. ‘What are you doing here?’
Again, he didn’t answer. His eyes were moving like those of a cornered animal, taking in the room, and his whole body was tense, ready for something . . . and then something in my brain bleeped. I recognised this kid. ‘You were there the other night,’ I said. ‘The blue dog. You were there.’
Nothing.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just—’
As I spoke, something in his expression changed. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking past me. Suddenly he dived to the floor and disappeared underneath a table, and with a heart-stopping snarl the Doberman launched itself towards me, razor teeth dripping with hot saliva, eyes burning with a psychotic, rabid rage where a second ago there had been placid indifference. Instinctively I flung myself up onto the ceiling and pinned my body there, just out of the creature’s reach. It was going completely mental, roaring and snapping its jaws, leaping up and down and clawing at me, like some kind of low-budget Smiley Joe re-enactment.
What do I do? What do I do?
Why is the quiet dog suddenly trying to eat me alive?
I can’t kill a dog . . . not a regular one anyway . . .
I could knock one out, though. I reached out with my mind, grabbed one of
the tables and brought it down crack on the top of the animal’s head, and it flopped on the floor with a whimper and lay still. Gingerly I dropped down, keeping my eye on it. It was breathing, luckily, and there was no blood, but I still felt guilty for braining it like that.
Knock out psycho mutt with table or get ripped into shreds of warm bloody dinner by psycho mutt. Tough choice.
I heard a scuffling and turned in time to see the mysterious boy scrambling out from under the table and sprinting out the door. ‘Wait!’ I chased after him, not thinking, and as soon as I emerged outside I wished I hadn’t, because the boy was gone and the street was full of black-clad soldiers, weapons raised.
‘Freeze!’ a voice said, distorted eerily through an amplifier. ‘We don’t want to hurt you!’
Yeah.
OK, then.
I blasted out a circle of energy, knocking them all off their feet, then made to take off, but now I realised that there were black helicopters in the sky above, and drones beyond them, and I could see the tell-tale red of laser tracers. I banked abruptly and hurtled down the street away from the soldiers, whipping up dust and rubbish in my slipstream, maximum acceleration, feeling the heat of a bullet as it streaked past my head.
Aah, screw this so, so much.
I ducked to the left, down a smaller side street, and carried on flying, trying to think over the thick chug of rotor blades overhead. I’d almost completed a thought when something exploded behind me, too close behind me, throwing concrete and rubbish bins aside and sending a gust of smoke forward. It enveloped me, making me choke as hot acrid stink filled my throat and lungs, but I forced myself to fly faster, praying I wasn’t about to go head-first into a brick wall. I managed to spot a right turn and took it; this new street opened out onto a main road, which was possibly not the greatest idea ever, but . . .
Ace of Spiders Page 18