by Alexis Hall
“Wait here,” she said, and stepped into the Thames.
As she walked, the water rose up to embrace her, silver spilling over the river as she vanished into the waves.
Normally, I’d have been pretty freaked out. As a general rule, you don’t wander into the Thames. But somehow I knew that if Nim was in trouble I would feel it. I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with that. Well. It was too late now. I hoped I hadn’t made a horrible mistake. I’m not a big fan of commitment at the best of the times, and here I was mystically bound to the service of the Witch Queen of London. But right now I needed her power. And I just had to hope that she didn’t go to war with anyone I liked until I’d worked off my debt.
After a while, Nimue walked out of the river, the water cascading away from her, leaving her a good deal drier than I was. Across her folded arms lay an actual motherfucking sword. It had a scabbard and everything.
“If you’re going to kill a faery lord, you’ll need a weapon.”
“Isn’t that going to be a bit conspicuous?”
“Not in the battles you’ll be fighting.”
I didn’t know whether that was reassuring or not. I was leaning towards not.
Nim drew the sword partway out of the scabbard. Although the hilt and the pommel were plain, the blade itself gleamed with shifting patterns.
“Whoa.” I stared at it blankly. Honestly, I had no idea what a well-made sword would even look like. “Shiny.”
“The blade is layered with the seven celestial metals and bound with powerful enchantments. There is nothing it cannot kill.”
“I don’t want to throw a spanner in the works,” I said, “but I’m not sure I can use a sword.”
She smiled. “The pointy end goes into the other man.”
“I kind of assumed there was more to it.”
“The blade will teach you. It wants to be used.”
Great. Now I was going to have a sword telling me what to do as well.
“And this was lying at the bottom of the Thames, why?”
“You’d be amazed at the things people throw into water.”
“Why haven’t you given this to anyone else?”
“Michelle’s essence would rebel against it, and none of my other followers would be suitable. Besides,” she added gently, “I was saving it for you.”
“You could have saved it a long time.”
“Yet here we are. Although I hoped you would come to me for me.”
My heart gave a painful little squeeze. “I didn’t know you were waiting.”
“I know you didn’t.” She looked down at the sword. “There’s something else you should know. The blade was not made to slay mortals. It will shatter if it ever draws human blood.”
“I’m not made to slay mortals either. To be honest, I’m not massively into the whole slaying gig. I’m a PI.”
“I suspect you have many talents you have not fully explored.”
“There are plenty of things I can do that I choose not to.”
She looked away. “Perhaps you’ll come to choose differently in time.”
I took the sword and rolled it up in my coat. Which did not look in any way suspicious. “Well, thanks. And sorry for . . . everything.”
“One last thing.”
She’d already made me swear fealty and given me a sword. I didn’t know what else was left. Nimue gestured, as if she was drawing something from the air, and a swirl of mist rose up from the Thames to envelop us. It felt like I’d stepped into cold water, and when I could see again, we were standing underneath Marble Arch, traffic roaring all around us, head lamps streaming white and gold in the deepening darkness.
“Well, that sure beats the Tube. Any particular reason we’re here?”
“Maeve.”
“Huh?”
“I’m commuting her sentence,” said Nimue.
She put a hand on the white stone wall and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The wall stretched like rubber, and a second set of fingertips pressed painfully through the marble, followed by palms, hands, wrists. And then, gradually, a stone impression of a face and body.
I looked round to see if anybody else had noticed this, but even the tourists didn’t seem to be interested.
“Do you normally keep people in Marble Arch?” I asked.
“Among other places.”
“How many people are in here?”
Nim shrugged. “More than ten, less than a hundred.”
“There’s a big difference between eleven and ninety nine,” I pointed out.
“Not all my predecessors kept records.”
“So it’s like a prison for naughty wizards?”
“Basically.”
About ten minutes later, Maeve was kneeling on the floor in front of us, drawing in great gulps of air. I felt really fucking sorry for her. I know she’d tried to kill me twice, but being trapped in stone looked like a world of not fun.
“Julian Saint-Germain has been kidnapped,” Nim explained. “Help with the rescue attempt, and I will free you from the Arch. Refuse and you return to serve out your sentence. I’m sorry.”
“I’m in.” Maeve climbed to her feet.
“She’s been taken by a faery lord,” I added. “He’s living in the sewers under Clerkenwell. It’s probably going to be really fucking dangerous.”
Maeve crossed her arms over her body and shivered. “I’m in. Really, I’m in. Whatever. I don’t care. I’m not going back in there.”
“Then I’ll see you at half eleven tonight.”
That made it me, my dickhead ex, a celibate incubus, the most fabulous man in fangs, an indestructible Geat, a shape-shifting toff, and someone who’d already tried to kill both me and the person we were trying to rescue. We’d got to seven after all. Still a bit light on magnificence, though.
I just had time to get home and discover my sewer kit was still fucked before we had to leave for Clerkenwell. It looked like I was going down there in my civvies, but considering I was probably going to get killed by a faery lord, I was slightly less worried about getting poo on my socks.
I tore through my kitchen, looking for something big enough to stash a sword in. If I had ever been to a gym ever I could have put it one of those long zippy bag things.
“It is time to leave, Miss Kane,” said Elise.
“I need somewhere to stick a sword.”
“Received wisdom suggests that the pointy end should go in the other man.”
“Before that.”
Elise’s eyes flicked back and forth around my kitchen. “You have disordered the room. It is unhelpful.”
“I’m having a crisis. I have to rescue my girlfriend from a killer shit faery, and I’ve got no way to carry my magic sword.”
“May I suggest you use two of the refuse sacks? I believe if you were to secure them with the roll of parcel tape you keep in the second drawer near the sink, you could achieve the desired effect.” I shoved the sword in a couple of bin liners and taped it round the middle. To be fair, a passing policeman probably wouldn’t think it was a sword. They might just think it was, say, a shotgun. But it was better than nothing. We headed down to the car, running only a little late, and Elise drove me to the same all night multistorey we used the last time I had to jump into a sewer at short notice.
I scrambled out the car, and then stuck my head through the open window. “You’ve already heard my ‘if I die’ speech. So, yeah, not back by four, dead, blah blah, tell my parents, have my stuff, take care of the devices. I’ll ring as soon as I get out because we’ll need a pickup. We could be anywhere, and some of us could be injured. You did find that mobile, right?”
“I did, Miss Kane. Furthermore, I understand in such circumstances it is customary to pause dramatically and then say ‘be careful.’”
“Don’t do that.”
“As you wish, Miss Kane.”
I headed for the exit.
The car park was pretty near empty, just the occasionally dubiously
parked van and oddly shaped shadows from the concrete pillars supporting the roof. Sometimes I think they design these places specifically to make you think you’re about to get murdered.
I grabbed the hilt of my sword through the bin liner. Of course, if what Nim had said was true, it’d be useless against ordinary muggers. But maybe it would give me a psychological advantage. Because they’d think I was fucking insane. I walked quickly for the exit, trying to keep in range of the flickering strip lights.
Then I started to get that thing where you feel like there’s footsteps echoing your footsteps.
I glanced over my shoulder, but there was nothing there.
And when I turned back Patrick was in front of me.
“Oh, you dick,” I said. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“It’s not me you should fear.”
“I’m not scared of you, I’m scared of creepy shit in abandoned car parks.” I pushed past him. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”
Then the fucker bit me, and I blacked out.
Vampires are basically parasites, and when they bite you stuff happens so that you’ll let them carry on biting you. Julian’s orgasmabite was top of my list for fun ways to be incapacitated, but I’ve met vampires that make you hallucinate or forget, or just plain paralyse you. A bite from Patrick knocks you out like a horse tranquiliser. And then you wake up with a pounding headache while he’s weeping in a corner about how hard he fights to control his terrible desires.
I woke up with a pounding headache, chained to the ceiling in Julian’s BDSM bonk pit, while Patrick was sitting on the edge of the chaise longue, brooding at me.
“What the fuck?” I struggled in my bonds. “Seriously, what the fuck, Patrick? I honestly thought I’d seen all of the patronising bullshit you had to offer, but clearly I was wrong. Let me down right now, you impotent angst puppy.”
Patrick looked at me sorrowfully. “It’s for your own good, Katharine.”
I rattled the chains again. Damn Julian for her sturdily constructed bondage playground.
“When I get out of here,” I said, “I might actually kill you.”
“That would be a small price to pay for your safety.”
I made an undignified noise. It kind of went “Gyaaaargh!” When I’d finished with that, I tried to reason with him, even though long experience told me it would probably be useless. “Look, I don’t have time for this.”
“It is already too late. The others have followed the Prince of Swords and gone without you. Soon it will be over, one way or the other.”
“Oh, you fuckguzzling shitweasel.”
“I understand that you are angry, Katharine.”
“I’m not angry!” I yelled. “I’m incan-fucking-descent. And you’d better not have lost my hat.”
“No, I brought your hat. And this.” He reached behind the chaise longue and set my sword over his lap. “What were you proposing to do with this, Katharine?”
“Pointy end in the other guy.”
“This is magecraft. I warned you about the witch. She is not to be trusted.”
“You fucking bit me. From behind. And chained me to the ceiling. You are the last person to be lecturing anybody about trust.”
“But I love you,” he said with infuriating, terrifying sincerity.
“You’ve got a fucking funny way of showing it. Now let me down. Or I’m getting down myself, and then I’m finding something long and spiky and ramming it up your arse.”
“Be patient, Katharine.”
Right. That was it. I called up my mother’s strength . . .
And nothing came.
Well, fuck.
I reviewed the situation. My hands were cuffed to a rigid metal bar, which hung from a chain, which hung from a ring, which hung from another chain, which hung from an eyelet. They were designed to be set up and taken down quickly, but not by people whose hands were held three feet apart.
Well, fuck. Fuck.
Patrick had completely screwed me, and that was never a pleasant experience.
“Look,” I tried. “What’s the plan here? Seriously. What’s the plan?”
He smouldered at me. “You will remain until morning. When I am certain you will be safe, I will release you.”
“What about Julian?”
“You are my priority, not her.”
“She’s my priority, dammit.”
“I’m just trying to protect you. From yourself, if necessary.”
“Patrick, you are a wank-covered dick sandwich of a man.”
I closed my eyes and searched for the hero inside myself. Okay, not so much hero as psychotic, bloodthirsty faery queen, but we work with what we’re given.
In the Deepwild, my mother licked blood from her fingers and smiled mockingly.
Hi, Mum. Guess you’re still pissed off.
The power was there, but trying to take it was like reaching through glass.
And then my mother turned and disappeared into the mists of Faerie, taking her power with her. And I was stuck chained to the ceiling at the mercy of my dickhead ex-boyfriend.
Well, fuck. “Fuck.”
“Miss Kane.” I twisted my head around and peered over the balcony. Elise was standing in the doorway of the Velvet, wrapped in the same big grey trench coat she’d been wearing when she came to my office. “Are you in need of assistance?”
“Who is that?” demanded Patrick.
“I’m up here, Elise,” I shouted.
Patrick glowered at me. “If you care for this woman, send her away. I have no wish to harm anybody, but I will protect you whatever the cost.”
“Shut up, Patrick.”
Elise’s steps rattled on the rickety stairway, and then she arrived in the gallery. Patrick vamp-bamfed in front of her, hissing.
“Excuse me, please,” said Elise. “I need to unchain my employer.”
“That will not be possible.”
She regarded him steadily. “On the contrary, I believe it will be a simple operation.”
Patrick’s hand shot out and closed around her throat. He seemed to be trying to throw her off the balcony. He was not succeeding. I couldn’t see the look on his face, but I had a good time imagining it. “What sorcery is this?” he snarled.
She placed a hand on Patrick’s chest and shoved him away. He skidded across the floor like a hockey puck, and crashed heavily into the far wall.
“It is recorded throughout Europe as far back as first-century Athens,” explained Elise.
Patrick sprang at her and struck her across the face. It made a sound like somebody dropping the Sunday roast on the kitchen floor, and he recoiled, clutching his hand. I could hear his bones snapping back into place.
“But many scholars believe it to originate from the time of King Solomon.” Elise reached up and unhooked the bar from its chain. “Of course,” she continued, “sorcerous techniques are often discovered in parallel in many parts of the world.” She snapped my hands free. I felt a tiny bit guilty for ruining a perfectly good piece of bondage kit.
Patrick charged at us, all claws, fangs, and looks of personal betrayal. I brought up the bar and let him impale himself with his own momentum. It wouldn’t kill him, just wreck his evening. I could have cut his head off as well, but that would have felt uncomfortably like murder. I know I’d threatened to kill him, but it turned out I’d been bluffing.
“So, in a way,” concluded Elise, “attempting to categorise magic of any sort is a futile endeavour.”
We stared down at Patrick. I’d got him square through the heart. I’m not exactly a demon-hunting ninja nun, but I’ve been dealing with vampires for more than a decade, and I know how to hit them where it hurts. He wouldn’t be coming after me anytime soon. He was ash-pale and barely moving. Honestly, it was an improvement.
“Elise,” I said, “this is Patrick Knight, my dickhead ex-boyfriend. Patrick, this is Elise.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Knight.”
“Trust me, it
isn’t. And, uh, thanks for the rescue.”
“Not at all, Miss Kane. I enjoy being useful. When I saw him incapacitate you, I thought it prudent to follow in the car. I have left it outside.”
I grabbed my hat and my sword. “I need to get back to Clerkenwell. Fast.”
“I believe this is quite exciting, Miss Kane.” Elise followed me outside.
It was getting close to half one when we got there, which was perilously close to drowning o’clock. We parked on double yellows, and I ran down Clerkenwell Road looking for a manhole, with Elise trailing behind me.
Even though it was after midnight, London’s a busy place, and there I was sprinting along a fairly crowded street with a sword in a bin liner trying to find a hole to jump down.
It was probably the least subtle thing I’d ever done.
Oh no, wait. Asking my animated statue assistant/sidekick to rip open a sewer grating with her superhuman strength. That was the least subtle thing I’d ever done.
“It’s all right,” I told the startled passersby, “We’re broadband engineers.” I peered into the darkness, trying to make sure I wasn’t going to jump into a pit of spikes or onto a hungry sewer crocodile.
“What network are you with?” asked someone in the slowly gathering crowd.
They seemed to like the idea of a company that sent emergency technicians down sewers at half one in the morning.
“I’m with Virgin,” offered someone else. “The service is terrible.”
I didn’t really have time to invent a fictional telecommunications company. “My colleague will tell you all about it.” I jumped.
There was that cold water feeling again and I landed on cracked, lichen-covered flagstones. I looked up and the light of the city was nothing but a distant glow. I was standing beneath an archway of congealed fat, threaded with brittle vines, and rotting grey-green roses. The whole place was lit by an eerie light that seemed to come from nowhere. Which was convenient since, with all the kidnapping, I’d forgotten my torch. Ahead of me I could see more archways and tunnels branching off in all directions.
Navigating a faery realm comes down to a mix of intuition, willpower, and luck. Not even the most basic rules apply. If you expect what’s behind you to be what was just in front of you, then you’re going to get lost in a straight corridor.