by Hall, Alexis
“Thanks, that’s really helpful.”
“Well—” Eve folded her arms. “—what’s your plan?”
“I was thinking maybe we could get ripped apart by tiny killer mirror monsters.”
Eve slumped into Percy’s upholstered desk chair and swung it onto its back legs.
I glared at her. “You’re carrying a million bits of kit. Haven’t you got anything to help with this?”
“I must have left my tiny unkillable-glass-spider killing device at home. I don’t even know what they are.”
“My best guess, based on my years of hands-on experience, is that they’re some kind of tiny unkillable glass spider.”
Another shard pierced the door.
“I’m really glad,” snapped Eve, “that an unhelpful wisecrack is the last thing I’m going to hear before I die.”
“No, the last thing you’re going to hear is that awful whining noise.”
The chair rocked forwards with a thump as Eve sat bolt upright. “Kate, you’re a fucking genius.”
“Am I? Oh good.”
“Okay, maybe I’m a fucking genius. Give me your phone.”
I fished the spare mobile out my pocket and handed it over. Eve whipped a set of watchmaker’s screwdrivers out of yet another belt pouch and flipped off the back panel. “What are you doing?”
“Feedback loop.”
“Thanks. But what are you doing?”
“I can explain this to you, or I can save our arses.”
Suddenly, the microphone on my phone started emitting the same terrible noise as the creatures outside. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be keeping it as a ringtone. Eve dashed across the room and bunged my phone through one of the cracks in the door. The screaming got louder, and then louder again, and then even louder, at which point I stuck my fingers in my ears. I could still hear it, and it was getting to the point that I could feel my teeth vibrate. I wasn’t sure what Eve’s plan had been. Maybe it was to make things so uncomfortable that getting torn to shreds would seem like a welcome relief.
Then either I went deaf or everything went quiet.
I think I said, “What happened?” but the ringing in my ears was so bad I couldn’t really tell. Eve tried to explain but I could barely follow her technobabble at the best of times. “What?”
My hearing was coming back slowly. Enough to hear the impatience in Eve’s voice. “Star Trek analogy version: it’s like an opera singer breaking a glass.”
I eased the door open carefully and peered into the room. The floor was covered in a shimmer of glass dust and the remains of my spare phone. I lose more handsets that way . . .
I let out a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding. The immediate danger was over, but there was no way Percy hadn’t noticed his wards going down. Somehow, I had to get out of the study, through the house, and across the grounds, without being spotted, while carrying the giant vase that every vampire in London, including a five-thousand-year-old death queen, was looking for.
I went to grab the thing and noticed just in time that it was sitting in a magic circle. A magic circle drawn in blood. I knew jack-shit about the occult, so I had no idea what that meant, but it couldn’t have been good. I gave it a sniff—mercury and old paper, wealth and secrets. Not just blood, but Henry Percy’s blood.
I glanced up at Eve. “I’m going to grab this pot. And then something bad is going to happen.”
“For fuck’s sake. Didn’t you learn anything the last time?”
“We’re alive, aren’t we?”
“Kate, I’m serious. Why don’t we go back to the library and see if we can find out about this circle and how to . . . what’s the word . . . defuse it?”
“Percy has to know we’re here by now. He’ll be sending people. We need to get this and get out.”
Eve activated her headset. “Cover the grounds, expect hostiles. Send the chopper, I need evac.”
“What happened to subtle?”
“Well, if he already knows we’re here, there’s no point. Besides, sneak your way in, fight your way out. There’s a reason it’s a classic.”
While we waited to be rescued, I bust open the desk and started rifling.
Eve folded her arms. “Oh, now there’s time to loot.”
“I need to know what this bastard’s up to. If you want to be Giles, be my guest, but the second the chopper gets here, I’m grabbing the pot and we’re leaving.”
“I’m way hotter than Giles.”
I found a stash of letters in the bottom drawer, but I didn’t really have time to read them properly. Even so, it wouldn’t have helped. They were all Greek to me. Half of them literally.
“Found it.” Eve plonked a book down on the desk and pointed at a picture of a mystical circle.
“Great. What’s it do?”
“I don’t know; it’s all in Latin. Let me scan it and run it through a— Hold on.” She put a hand to her ear. “Vampires incoming.” Then she spoke back into the headset: “Do not engage. Repeat, do not engage. We’re moving out.”
There was nothing for it. I grabbed the pot. It didn’t fall apart. I didn’t die. So that was good.
Eve swept up the book, and we hightailed it back into the red room and towards the front of the house. We skidded across a marble-floored antechamber ringed with golden statues of Greek gods and then into a vast, echoing entrance hall decorated with a similar theme of naked dudes and more money than taste. I glanced through one of the windows only to see a small group of vampires gliding over the front lawn. Shit, I’d dropped my knives. But, given I was carrying an enormous pot, it wasn’t like I was in much of a state of fight them anyway.
“Courtyard this way.” Eve kicked open a door on the opposite side of the room, and I chased after her as quickly as I could with the crockery.
It was one of those fountain and hedges arrangements, remarkably low on cover unless we wanted to hide in the pond. I stared up at the dark, chopperless sky.
“Two minutes,” whispered Eve.
I put down my pot and got ready to punch a vampire in the teeth. I heard the front door open. I could tell Percy’s goons meant business because I didn’t hear their footsteps in the hall.
Eve fired her grappling hook at a statue of a lion that someone had plonked on the roof for no reason, and shot upwards. Guess I was on bait duty.
I ducked in beside the door, waited for the first vampire to come through and coldcocked him in the mouth. It didn’t stop him, of course, just broke his jaw and wrecked his day. As he came snarling to his feet, one of Eve’s darts struck in him in the neck, and he went down again. One day, I’d have to ask what was in those things.
Since a body lying right there was a bit of a giveaway, I dragged him across the courtyard and dumped him in the pond.
Blades whirred overhead and a black helicopter came into view over the battlements. It belatedly occurred to me that I had no idea how I was going to get myself, Eve, and a bloody great pot into a helicopter.
It seemed like the rest of the vampires had figured out where we were. Eve took one out with another dart and then rappelled down the side of the building to join me.
A rope ladder thwooshed into the middle of the courtyard. I bundled the pot under one arm and caught the ladder. Eve dropped another vampire and grabbed on beside me.
“Go, go, go,” she yelled.
There was a jerk, and I nearly dropped the pot as the helicopter pulled us into the sky. Then there was another jerk as they started winding the ladder up. I couldn’t hear anything or say anything, and the rush of wind had blown off my fucking hat, but I was damn glad I was getting out of there.
Then a bright blue fireball exploded just above me. The chopper rocked and the ladder burst into flame.
We were already high enough up that letting go wasn’t an option, but it wasn’t like I could climb a burning rope with one hand either.
I was just weighing up my options, and then I didn’t have any.
The ladder
snapped.
I barely had time to realise I was falling before Eve wrapped herself around me and we shuddered to a bone-jolting midair stop.
Thank fuck for that grappling hook. I was never taking the piss out of her Batman suit again.
I wound both arms around the pot and tried not to think about the very thin cord that was holding both of us tethered to I don’t know what a good hundred feet above Brentford.
I didn’t want to look up, and I didn’t want to look down, but I could see flickers of blue flame shooting past us, so I just shut my eyes and hoped it’d sort itself out.
We went whizzing upwards, and then I felt hands dragging me into the relative safety of the helicopter.
I decided it was probably okay to open my eyes.
We were in a smallish cabin with benches along the sides. I crawled onto one and wedged the pot in beside me, next to a couple of dudes in black. Eve was crouched on the floor, talking rapidly into her headset as she scanned the books we’d nicked.
“Any joy?” I asked.
“Not sure, it’s some kind of warding ritual, but magic isn’t really my thing.”
“Warding against what?”
“No clue. I think it says something about concealment here. Probably something to do with the blood. If we knew whose it was, we might be able to work out what it was for.”
“Uh, I’m pretty sure it was his own.”
“Okay, that’s really weird. Why would you want to keep yourself away from something you stole and were keeping in your house?”
I thought back to Jacob. He’d said that vampires could be targeted through their bloodlines, which was how the Kill Everything Ritual was supposed to work. The Kill Everything Ritual that Henry Percy had gone out of his way to stop.
Because he’d raised the Morrígan.
And he was descended from the Morrígan.
Which meant that that the circle wouldn’t just keep him away from the pot, it would stop the Morrígan hunting it down as well.
In fact, that was probably why she hadn’t found it already.
Oh, fuck.
I twisted round, looked out of the window, and saw a flock of ravens, black against the city lights below.
A taloned hand burst through the floor.
Eve stared at it for a moment and then signalled her minions to take firing positions.
“Eve, trust me, this is way above their pay grade.”
“Stuck in a helicopter. Can’t really sit this one out. And if we’re going down, we’re all going down fighting.”
With a groaning of metal, a large chunk of the chopper gave way, offering us a charming view of the empty sky, the distant city, and the enraged vampire queen flying directly below us.
I leaned over the gap. “We’ve got your pot. We just want to talk.”
The Morrígan’s hand shot out, grabbed me by the throat, and hauled me through the hole in the floor. My stomach lurched as I realised that my own neck was the only thing between me and the world’s least successful skydive.
Darts whistled past me and sank into the Morrígan’s flesh. She didn’t notice.
I kicked my feet pointlessly against empty air and wrapped both arms around the wrist that held me.
“I will take what is mine.” The Morrígan’s voice cut through the thunder of the helicopter and the shrieking of the ravens. “Then I will kill you all and lay waste to this city.”
I had to admit, I wasn’t exactly negotiating from a position of strength. What was my counteroffer going to be? Let me go and I won’t bruise your thumb with my windpipe?
Times like these, a girl really needed her mum.
The Morrígan’s hand tightened around my throat, her claws beginning to gouge into my skin.
I closed my eyes and opened myself to the Deepwild. Blood and the power of dark places rushed over me. On the topmost branch of the tallest tree in our kingdom, my mother perched and waited, still as stone and moss.
I lashed out at the Morrígan with my mother’s strength. It wasn’t enough. There was a dull red fire behind my eyes.
I struggled, but I needed more. I needed everything.
My mother smiled.
In the other place, my daughter is dying, and she gives herself to me at last.
I open my eyes in that far world of steel and stone.
My body is not to my liking. Too small, too weak, too mortal.
I change it.
The corpse queen looks and sees me for my true self. She bares her fangs and pulls me to her. I feel her teeth in my neck as I drive my fingers through her unliving flesh and wind them in her entrails.
I laugh with the joy of it.
The corpse queen rips at my neck and laps at my blood. I draw out a handful of viscera and cast it free on the wind. I bury my hands in her feathers and tear the wings from her back in a spray of blood and shadow.
We fall together, clawing at each other in an ecstasy of hunger, and crash to earth upon tamed grass and enslaved trees.
The corpse queen scatters in shadows and feathers and mist. I turn my face to the wind and seek the scent of fresh prey.
A human creature lowers herself from the sky machine that follows us.
She speaks. “What the fuck?”
I turn and look at her. “Run.”
“Kate, what’s going on?”
“You will run, and I will catch you, and when I catch you, I will kill you.”
“Oh fuck, you’re her.” She inches slowly backwards. Perhaps she thinks I will not notice. “Listen, Kate, I know you’re in there somewhere.”
“We are one and the same, child.” Somewhere, my daughter screams at me. A petulant tantrum. “Perhaps I will not kill you. You have strong bones; you would make a good hound. Or a deer perhaps, to be hunted and devoured, night after night.”
“I’m not going to run.” She steps forwards.
“It will be quick if you run.”
“Sorry, I don’t negotiate with psychopaths.” She steps forwards again.
As she comes closer, I think of ways to make her pay for her insolence. Perhaps I will peel off her skin and fashion a new sheath for my knife. While she watches. Once she is within arm’s reach, I catch her by the hair and drag her to her knees. She brings up one hand and strikes at my thigh, and I feel the cold, sickening burn of iron pierce the muscle.
I roar at the outrage of it, reach down, and snap her arm. I scent pain and fear. A shadow stirs at the back of my mind. My daughter glares at me with fury in her purple eyes. The shock of iron still sears my blood. She claws at the edges of our mind, and fights for dominion over our weakening flesh.
Unattended, the human strikes me in the chest, knocking the breath from my daughter’s body.
The other place no longer to my liking, I return, for the present, to the Deepwild.
“Jesus, fuck, enough already,” I wheezed. “Stop punching me.”
Eve stopped punching me. “Kate?”
I was kneeling on the cold grass, feeling as shit as I’d felt in a long time. “You fucking stabbed me.”
“You kind of needed it.”
I tried to stand up, but my body felt weird, like when you get in your car and somebody’s fiddled with the driver’s seat. And, if it hadn’t been for Eve’s sudden injection of cold iron, I’d still be a passenger. “I guess I kind of did. Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
I made another attempt to be functional and made it upright. My leg hurt like hell, which was nice, because it matched the rest of me. I held out a hand to help Eve up and noticed that her right arm was hanging limp at her side. I gestured awkwardly. “Was that . . . me?”
She shook her head. “It was your mother, Kate, not you.”
“In my body. I could have killed you.”
“But you didn’t, and that’s what matters. Now, do you want to stand around angsting, or do you want to save this city?”
“Where’s the damn pot?”
“On its way to HQ. And we should be to
o.”
I looked round. We were in some sort of park, with a sodding great gold statue sitting in a pointy gothic tower. “Is that the Albert Memorial?”
“Looks like.” Eve flicked on her headset. “Send a car to Kensington Gardens.”
Tangled in the grass were a scattering of black feathers. These were probably worth a fortune to the right sort of person, but things the right sort of person is willing to pay for are things the wrong sort of person is willing to kill for. I didn’t need the aggro. I picked up one and stuck it in my inside pocket. I’d have put it in a ziplock bag, but it wouldn’t fit.
Then we limped down to the road to wait for pick up.
“You know,” I said, “we should probably both get to a hospital.”
“There’s a surgical unit back at base. They’ll patch us up.”
Well, at least I wasn’t going to have to make up any interesting stories to explain the stab wound. Slipped while trying to scratch my arse with a kebab skewer. We were both too exhausted and stressed out for chitchat, so we just slumped there in silence until the car arrived.
Back at the Locke Cave, I had my leg stitched up, and Eve got her arm set and splinted. My mother had dealt with most of my glass cuts and other injuries, so I guess I’d handed my body to a crazy faery queen and come out vaguely ahead on the deal. Unless you count nearly killing my ex-girlfriend.
Once I’d got my lollipop and my I was brave at the secret underground medical facility sticker, I was given my pot and escorted back to Eve’s office. She’d shed the Batman costume and was sitting in her chair, with images flickering and flying across the screens around her. Her arm was in a sling, and she had that tight, focused look she always got when she was shaken.
“You okay?”
She spun round. “Fine.”
“This is me you’re talking to. You don’t have to be fine.”
“We broke up. You don’t get to play that card anymore.”
“Giving a shit is not a card.”
“Whatever, Kate. I need you to get that damn vase out of my building. I don’t have the resources to handle another attack of that magnitude.”
Part of me felt that this would be a perfect time to say I told you so, but the part of me that wasn’t an arsehole kept my mouth shut. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I’ve worked out what I’m going to do with the pot, and we’ve found Tara. Unless I can talk her down, there’s going to be a whole lot of killing.”