by Tim Lebbon
He had disappeared from her life. Or at least he should have. If everything he had seen, and all that Lilou had told him was true, he should never contact Angela again. The danger was too great.
Yet he could not keep away. He’d made a mess of things, but the one good thing in his life was Angela. He needed her now more than ever, and knowing that she was looking for him—knowing that she was hurting and uncertain—made him want to go back to her instantly.
That would be a stupid thing to do. He knew it. Death and danger stalked him still, and he had no wish to draw Angela in anymore than she already was.
Seeing her leaving Lucy’s, Vince had known instantly that she was still searching for him. Of course she was. There was no way she would simply let him go. So he followed her. With every step, good sense told him to turn around and go back the way he had come. Love told him to call her name.
By now Lilou would know that he was gone, but he was also certain she would welcome him back into her protection. She’d understand his need to see Angela. She would acknowledge his confusion. He had enough to be confused about, and frankly he was amazed that he wasn’t a gibbering, drooling mess.
That comes later, Vince thought, and a rush of memories assaulted him. Breathing heavily, he slipped into the shadows of a side alley while they played out. His palms were damp with sweat that felt like blood. He wished he could forget. Maybe he’d ask Lilou about that. She would know someone who could make him forget, he was sure.
Perhaps they could also wipe Angela from his mind.
The idea was shocking, and horrible, and he hurried to catch sight of her again. She was making her way along a busy street, glancing behind her now and then. His actions had caused her to become nervous, and he cursed himself for that, but it was too late for regrets.
Angela paused and stared back along the street, and Vince ducked into a shop doorway, peeking out. I’ll go to her, he thought. We’ll face the danger together.
Then he realised that she hadn’t been looking at him. She stared across the street at a place a hundred meters ahead of him, where a truck was parked close to the curb. He squinted, shielding his eyes from the glare of the shop’s illuminated display. He saw movement as a shadow shifted, but he couldn’t make out who or what it was.
Lilou had warned him.
Vince moved quickly and quietly, trying to blend in with pedestrians, holding a pretend phone to his ear because no one would see him then, gazes would skim over him because to them, he was involved in another story that no one cared about. But however fast he moved, he couldn’t find anyone else watching Angela. Sometimes he felt eyes on his back and turned to check, seeing only revelers and drinkers laughing their way along the street, or families keeping close together as they went from one unknown place to another. Never a watcher.
He took a shortcut down an alley and moved along a parallel street, running, finding true darkness in those back places where cats hunted and a fox screamed like a baby. It almost took him back to how things had been. But he knew that things could never, ever be the same again.
Emerging at the far end of their street he walked a little way, then leaned against a parked car. He knew he’d look suspicious if anyone saw him, but he had already made his mind up. He was going to wait until Angela reached home, then he’d go to her, quickly and quietly. Tell her of the dangers. Plead with her to come with him.
Lilou would protect them both.
Surprised to find tears blurring his vision, Vince wiped at his eyes and saw Angela staring right at him.
Her mouth fell open. He dropped down behind the car.
From further along the street, something screamed.
* * *
“Vince!” she shouted. She couldn’t help it, couldn’t hold back the terror and delight in her voice. If it had been him, though, he didn’t show his face. As quickly as she saw him, he was gone.
The scream faded away, leaving behind it a heavy, loaded silence. She’d heard plenty of urban foxes, or cats, or other sounds in the night that she had never identified, and which the next morning had faded from memory. This one was already going the same way, replaced by a stillness back along the street from where she had come. Something waiting to happen, or pounce.
“Vince?” She looked back and forth between the car where the figure had been hiding, and the end of the street. No curtains fluttered, no windows opened, and at that moment there was no one else walking the pavements.
A car passed the street’s end, lights flaring and fading again. Music from its stereo did the same. Mumford & Sons, she thought. Great, that’ll be in my head all night now, and I’ll never—
The scream came again, closer, followed by running footsteps. They sounded strange. Heavier than shoes, like something solid striking the pavement. A shape flitted through a pool of light far along the road, but it was too big to be a person, must have been a shadow.
Someone ran across the street from left to right, no more than thirty yards away. They were fast, feet barely touching the ground.
“Vince?” she said, quieter than before. She started backing away, watching as the shape melted into the shadows between a parked car and a white van. If it was Vince, he’d answer her. He would reveal his presence, not try to hide away and frighten her. She’d first seen him in the opposite direction, but then heard those footsteps as someone ran. Heavy shoes, clop clop clop, and maybe he’d been followed and was trying to shake them.
Angela pulled her keys from her pocket, and backed along the pavement.
Another scream. This one sounded different, more filled with anger and rage than anything else. Flowing with bloodlust.
She gasped and tripped over a broken paving slab, hitting the ground hard and clasping onto her keys. She quickly scampered to her feet, just in time to see the shape dart across the road again… and something else following it.
It was this second figure that screamed, and which was making those heavy footsteps, and Angela could see why. It was huge. The biggest man she had ever seen, incredibly fast for his size. She opened her mouth to shout something—a warning, a cry of shock, an expression of fear. As she did, the first figure tripped and fell against a parked car.
“Vince!” she cried again, because she was certain now that the fallen shape was her love. And then, just as she stepped past a parked motorcycle and out into the road, the pursuing shape hit him.
It started kicking hard, then stamping. The sounds were awful, rapidly changing from dry crunching to something altogether wetter. Another cry rang out, from a different throat than before. It sang of hopelessness and untold agonies.
“No!” she screamed. She couldn’t see clearly, but yellow streetlight glimmered on the spreading pool of black blood.
The attacking figure, tall and powerful and snorting with effort, lifted its head and looked at her.
Angela thought about backing away, but her feet would not move. She gripped her keys so hard that she felt the kiss of warm blood cooling as it dripped from her palm. Her heart hammered, so loud that she could hear little else but the buzzing, pulsing beat.
The goliath stared at her for a long moment. He tilted his head to one side, scratched at his bearded chin. Then he delivered one final, massive stamp on the fallen body. Angela heard a sickening crack, and saw blood and other matter splash across the side of the parked car.
A gasp escaped her. Her heart seemed to stop.
She took a step forward, and the big man dashed across to the opposite sidewalk. He flitted behind parked cars, seemingly dodging the splash of street lamps, and the shadows swallowed him far faster and more completely than they should have. Heavy footfalls faded quickly to nothing. Angela blinked and he was gone, almost as if he could have never been there at all.
“Vince…” she whispered, stepping toward the wet shape huddled down beside a car, splashed across its metalwork, pieces of crushed and torn meat sitting in wet puddles on the tarmac. “Help,” she said, barely more than a breath. Then she
was shouting. “Help me! Please help.” She looked at the rows of houses on both sides, amazed that no one had heard and come to her aid. Several curtains twitched and fell back into place, a door snicked closed, silence fell.
“Won’t somebody help me?”
She couldn’t force herself to move any closer. She didn’t want to see. She could smell him—blood and warm meat and shit—and in the weak light she could see the inside parts of her lover that should never be seen, a terrible intimacy.
A car turned into the street ahead of her, drove for a few seconds, and paused. She blinked against the full-beam headlamps, then held up her hands as it crept along toward her.
Crime scene, she thought. Murder. I’ve got to call the police now, because there’s nothing else to do. No reason not to. No reason to go on.
Angela sobbed, a shuddering cry that wracked her body and cramped the muscles in her shoulders. The car came on, pausing only when it was right next to the bloody ruin in the road. A door opened, vague behind the glaring lights.
“Please,” Angela said.
“Oh, dear,” a deep voice said.
And then the man chuckled softly.
Another door opened. “Come with us.”
Claudette.
Angela took a step back, nudging against the parked motorcycle. She could run to her door and unlock it before they reached her, slam it behind her, through to the back garden and up the fire escape to her upstairs neighbours, bang on their door, get inside and call the police—
Then Claudette was standing in front of her, the woman’s slight form silhouetted against the car lights, and she held something in her hand.
“Come on, now. Quietly.”
“But…”
Claudette glanced back at the car.
“Don’t worry, Harry’s on it.”
Angela heard the scrape of metal against tarmac, then a sucking sound as something wet was scooped up. “Oh, fucking gross,” she heard, then Harry chuckled again.
“No,” Angela said.
“Yes,” Claudette said. She reached out and touched a gun against Angela’s stomach. “Yes.”
Angela went with her and fell into the car’s rear seat. There was someone else there, a much older man, who barely glanced at her. The car rocked as Harry opened the boot. Metal clanged, then a heavier thump as a bag or bucket was dropped in.
“Here,” the old man said. He leaned across the back seat, and Angela felt a brief sting as something was pressed against the back of her hand.
Harry and Claudette got into the front of the car, moving in slow motion, slower, and then Angela’s world sank away to nothing.
* * *
Some of the street lamps weren’t working, and those that were cast weak glows, light filtering through decades of spider webs and dust coating the covers. Oases of comfort glowed behind curtains, some of which twitched and settled again as she walked by.
She wondered whether people had seen what had happened here, but could never ask.
Closer to the address Vince had given her she felt violence on the air. It wasn’t a sensation that pleased her, like it did some of the others, because Lilou was built for love, not war. She couldn’t understand how anyone might be attracted to such heavy, hot rot.
She had arrived just too late. The whole scene pulsed with the sense of having so recently ended, and when she moved carefully along the pavement, senses alert, sniffing the air for danger, she felt control slipping even further away.
The warm London air tasted of despair and the slick blackness of death, sounds traveled as if dampened by an atmosphere thickened by screams, and she smelled blood.
Not just the suggestion of spilled insides that manifested after any act of violence. Actual blood, and a lot of it.
She sought it out quickly and found the gruesome evidence on the road. Black in the night, there was still no doubting. She knelt and reached out her hand, touching her fingertips carefully, delicately, against the sticky mess.
Lilou stood and breathed in deeply, trying to rid her nostrils of the stink. She willed away the memory of violence and imagined distant places she had not seen for so long—wide open countryside with blossom-filled trees dancing to the breeze, sunlight dappling soft forest pools, flowers blooming with confidence and hope for the future. It was a trick Mallian had taught her. She didn’t fully understand, because she was nowhere near as old as him, but for now it was all she could do.
Mind settled, she passed her fingertips beneath her nose and inhaled, and her heart sank as she fell to her knees. Tears burned. Her sight blurred.
In the distance a fox barked twice, and Lilou jumped to her feet, head tilted. After a brief pause there came two more barks from further away. The fox was fleeing danger.
With a heaviness to her soul, so did she.
Mallian would need to know.
12
Vince asks her to marry him.
It’s as she always imagined it, and although she used to regard herself as a modern woman, their relationship casual and beautiful and not needing anything to validate it or to make it more secure, a wedding has always been something she imagined in her future. She’s tried to analyze why this is, and still isn’t sure. Perhaps it’s a scrap of traditionalism left over from her upbringing, but then her parents never pushed her toward marriage, employment, or two-point-four children.
Her father always told her to follow her dreams, and her mom said happiness is more about what you feel inside than what others expect of you. She’s thought it through many times, occasionally chatting with Vince about it, though never in a serious way. He’s been open to the idea, but it’s never been a big thing between them. Not like having kids.
In the end, Angela has decided it’s all about the fairy tale.
She was smitten with fairy tales as a child, as most children are for a certain period of time. Many grow out of it quickly, when reality starts to assert itself and all those stories of fantastic creatures and places become shadowy aspects of the imagination, instead of real things that can almost be touched. She held onto the dream a little while longer, and it was always the happy endings that set her imagination on fire.
And they all lived happily ever after. It was a magical phrase that she’s tried to carry into adulthood. Something about standing in front of family and friends, confirming their love, exchanging rings, has always made her believe she could accept those words for herself.
They’re walking through Hyde Park at dusk, having just been for a nice meal and a bottle of wine to celebrate their fourth anniversary. At least, she said it was their fourth, as it’s the anniversary of their first real date. Vince protested, and said they should celebrate the day of their first kiss. That had been on their second date, three days later.
“So shall we get married?” he asks.
“Really?” she replies.
“I was hoping for a better response than that.”
They stop, standing close to an enclosed pond where ducks, swans, and geese are settling as the sun smears itself down into the skyline. The air carries the smell of hot honey-roast nuts from a seller across the park, and elsewhere a group of people sing and dance, surprising choral perfection cutting through the more mundane sounds of the city.
“Of course,” she says, delighted and surprised. It’s already been a perfect evening. “I suppose you’ll want sex now.”
“Well, not now. Not with, you know…” He tilts his head to the side. “…the ducks watching.”
They kiss, and when she pulls away something changes. The singing breaks in tone, becoming angry. A duck quacks, water splashes, violence erupts somewhere out of sight. Vince’s smile fades away.
Without any change to his features, he becomes a stranger. She no longer knows him at all. He still holds her close and tight, and as she takes in a breath to scream in his face, he smiles.
“Old One-Eye is watching you,” he says.
Angela closes her own eyes and screams.
; * * *
A hand clamped down across her mouth. She opened her eyes and saw the inside of the car, and remembered immediately what had happened. The hand tasted old, dusty, as if it had been unused for some time.
“Shush, now,” a man’s voice said. “No use screaming. We’re not going to hurt you.” He moved the hand away.
“Vince,” she said.
“Yeah, well…” Claudette said from the front seat. She didn’t elaborate.
Angela shrugged herself upright. The back of her hand stung, her head swam. She felt sick, but she didn’t think she had been out for long. Claudette was still driving, and the streets of London flitted by outside. She tried to make out where they were, but couldn’t be sure. Familiar chain shops and restaurants meant she could be anywhere.
“What do you want with me?” she asked.
She remembered the big man stamping down on Vince, that final stomp that crushed and cracked whatever was left of his head.
And she remembered Harry scooping up his remains with a shovel.
Sickness rolled around her stomach and prickled sweat across the back of her neck. The old man beside her dropped an empty carrier bag in her lap, but she brushed it aside. If she was going to puke, she’d do her best to spray them all.
“Mary Rock wants to chat,” Claudette said.
“Mary Rock?”
None of them replied. Angela stayed quiet. It was a name she had only come across once or twice, in her studies, and someone she’d quickly come to think of as a modern urban myth.
“You’re shitting me,” she said.
Harry turned around in his seat, looking at the old man and smiling.
“She thinks we’re shitting her.”
“You think we’re shitting you?” the old man asked. Angela looked at him properly for the first time. He could have been anyone’s grandfather, maybe seventy years old but carrying his age with grace and style. He looked fit and strong. His hair was shaved close to his scalp, and the small gray goatee he sported gave him a distinguished air.
“Yes, I do, Gramps,” she said.
The old man’s smile only slipped for an instant before returning. “My name’s Kris, with a ‘K’.”