by Hall, Alexis
Henry Percy was waiting for me in a wingback chair by the fireplace. He was wearing a pinstriped suit like when we’d met at King’s Cross. I wondered where he’d stashed the robe and the mask, but I didn’t wonder too long because I was distracted by the fact he had my motherfucking sword over his lap.
“Sorry I’m late, the traffic was murder.”
He came gracefully to his feet. “You were much less flippant the last time you were here.”
“I’ve grown as a person.”
I was horribly aware that the last time I’d fought Percy, I’d been holding the sword, there’d been a mage backing me up, and I’d still lost. And now he was halfway to being a god as well.
He prowled around me, trailing the tip of the blade along the ground. “So, we have, at last, come full circle.”
As long as he was talking, he wasn’t trying to kill me, and the more time I had to come up with an ingenious escape plan. “We’ve not come full circle, we’ve just got in a fight twice.”
“Ah, Miss Kane. There is so much more to this than you realise.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got the becoming a god thing. I’m not impressed.”
He stopped dead, that pissed off vampire stillness creeping over him. “How enterprising of you.”
He raised a hand, and I was flung backwards across the room, straight into a heavy oak bookcase. Several volumes came tumbling down on top of me.
He lifted the sword and strolled casually towards me.
I grabbed the nearest book and wanged it at him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t expecting that because the corner caught him on the side of his head.
He blinked and lifted a hand to his brow. I was expecting him to say something condescending, but instead, he just bared his fangs and hissed.
He lunged for me, quick but wild. I rolled out the way, and from the angry snarl behind me, I was pretty sure he’d just wrecked another one of his precious books.
If I wasn’t actually going to win this fight, I could at least do as much property damage as possible.
I nipped round the next bookcase over, and shoved it as hard as I could, which was pretty fucking hard, what with the adrenaline and the remains of my mother’s power still in my system. Groaning like a wounded buffalo, the case pitched and cracked and tipped a good tonne of paper, leather, and antique hardwood onto the Wizard Earl of Northumberland.
It wouldn’t hold him for long, so I bent down and grabbed the most stake-shaped bit of shelf I could find.
There was a wave of telekinetic force that sent me crashing into the wall yet again, and then an explosion of book shrapnel as Henry Percy emerged from the wreckage. He shook dust from his mane and glared at me like he’d gone way past just wanting me dead.
He came forwards slowly and, with each step, made a sweeping gesture with his hand that sent another chunk of library flying right at me. There wasn’t much I could do except bring my arms up and try to stop anything sharp or heavy from going through my head. It wasn’t like I could outrun the room I was standing in.
At last he was looming over me, sword raised. His eyes were wild and cold. “Just f-fucking die.”
He stabbed me.
From experience, I was expecting it to hurt a lot more.
There was just pressure, cold steel against my skin, and the slightest of scratches. Then the blade shattered.
Nim had told me it wouldn’t draw human blood. It was kind of reassuring to know that I counted.
I reckoned I had about three seconds before Percy realised what was going on and just bit me. I snatched up one of the shards of the sword, hoped like hell it had kept some of its power, and thrust it towards his heart.
Percy’s left hand came up protectively, and my weapon went through his palm.
He screamed like someone who was feeling pain for the first time in five hundred years. While he was processing that, I stood up, punching him in the jaw on the way.
He fell backwards into an undignified heap, cradling his hand. Blood ran down his arm and soaked through his expensive suit.
Another wave of force pushed me backwards. It was weaker than before, but it gave Percy time to get to his feet and start scrambling away from me.
I grabbed my bookcase stake and charged. Yet another wave of force hit me, but I just pushed through it.
This fucker was going down, and I think he realised it. He half turned, swept his one good arm in a half circle, and suddenly everything was on fire. Starting with the carpet and the piles of books. Then licking up the walls and spreading over the bookcases. Everything bursting into eerie blue flame. It wasn’t hot, but I was starting to feel tired.
I filed all that away in a box marked later and jumped on Henry Percy as hard as I could, hammering my stake into his heart with all my body weight. He had just enough time to look really, really angry before he dropped to the floor, paralysed.
Huh. I’d expected that to feel more satisfying. I guess revenge was cool and all, but the whole trapped in a burning building thing was really taking the edge off.
I’d kind of been hoping that staking Percy would take care of that, but the fire was still there, and still spreading, and if I didn’t get out of here soon, it was going to be a pretty short-lived victory.
Just then, I heard a piercing scream from the direction of the secret passage.
I looked down at Percy’s impaled corpse. Rule Twelve said very clearly that just because you rammed a stake through somebody’s heart and left them in the burning wreckage of their library, that was not a guarantee they were dead. On the other hand, I had nothing to decapitate him with, and I’d have felt like a prize dickhead if Sofia got eaten by vampires while I was trying to saw some bloke’s head off with the edge of my Oyster card.
Also fire.
Leaving Percy on the floor and the flames raging, I ran back through the secret passage.
I’m not usually a stop-and-take-stock-of-the-situation kind of girl, but this time I had no fucking clue what was waiting for me in the ritual chamber. So I lurked outside for a moment, trying to work out what the hell had gone wrong now. It was kind of quiet in there, which was either a good sign or a very bad sign, and I’ve never got anywhere betting on good.
I was just about to burst in, when someone spoke.
“Fear not child, it will all be over soon.”
I’d heard that low, rasping voice before. What the fuck was Sybil doing here? Also when somebody says everything will be over soon, the last thing you want to do is give them a chance to demonstrate.
I shoved open the door and charged into the room like an idiot just as Sybil sank her teeth into Sofia’s neck. I jumped over the unconscious bodies of Patrick and the half-dozen vampires he’d been fighting, grabbed Sybil by the hair and yanked her head back. The funny thing about pulling hair is that the only people who do it are six-year-old girls and hardened street fighters: in either case, it tends to work.
Sofia collapsed to the floor, bleeding and shaking. Sybil hissed and struggled against me, but while I was pretty sure she was as old as dirt, she wasn’t a fighter. I was kind of low on weapons so I punched her in the head and kept on punching her in the head while I tried to come up with a better plan.
She thought of one first.
Turned out, it was transform into a giant snake.
I was left holding absolutely nothing and wrapped in a python. Eve had always said turning into a giant snake never helped anyone, but Sybil seemed to have it down. She tightened around me. In the last couple of weeks, I’d come to realise just how much I take breathing for granted.
I tried to remember the technique for escaping from a python. It was either smack it on the nose, run up a hill, or wait until it’s nearly eaten you. Since my arms were pinned, waiting wasn’t my style, and I’d forgotten to bring my hill with me, I was going to have to try something else. Sybil might not have been able to throw a punch, but she had the grab-and-squeeze thing down pat.
Here lies Kate Kane. Crushed to death by a
crazy vampire prophetess in the shape of a giant snake. Beloved daughter. Sorely missed.
I was just getting those pretty red spots in front of my eyes when I heard a gentle voice saying something I still didn’t understand in a language I still guessed was some kind of ancient Greek.
There was a shiny bright light coming vaguely from above me or around me or something and the terrible crushing pressure on my ribcage got a whole lot less terrible.
Sybil uncoiled herself and turned back into a crazy middle-aged hippie.
I choked for bit and struggled to my feet.
Sofia was standing in the centre of the room, surrounded by a glow like evening sunlight.
“I will return for what is mine, child.” Sybil bared her teeth at Sofia, her eyes a poisonous green.
I was pretty sure we had the advantage, but since the only weapon I had right now was a glowing teenager who didn’t understand her powers any better than I did, I wasn’t going to push my luck.
“Look,” I said, “I know you’ve got a raging hard-on for oracle blood but Percy’s dead, this house is kind of on fire, and I’m having a really bad day, so can you please just fuck off?” She turned and drifted out like really angry smoke.
I was unbelievably glad that had worked. Plan B had been stand around and see which of us was most flammable.
Sofia was gradually dimming. “There’s no need to swear.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realise this was a PG rescue mission. Now come on, let’s get out of here.”
I picked up Patrick, who was stirring but still out of it, and threw him over my shoulder. And we ran back upstairs, through the less on-fire bits of the house, out the front door, and across the lawn to a safe distance.
Trismegistus Hall was in a bad way. Unnatural flames were dancing behind most of its windows, and there was a weird blue shadow against the night sky like the afterimage of fireworks. We were going to have a hell of a time explaining this to the fire brigade.
I dumped Patrick on the ground and turned to see if Sofia was okay.
To my surprise, she gave a little smile. “Thanks for saving my life. And trying to warn me.”
I scuffed my toe against the turf. “S’okay. And you did kinda save my arse too.”
“I didn’t want any of this.” She twisted a finger anxiously in her hair. “Why won’t everyone just leave us alone?”
“Is that an actual question that you want me to try and answer, because I think I sort of can?”
She nodded hesitantly. “What’s wrong with me?”
Oh, fuck. I was nowhere near qualified for this. “First off, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just the world is bigger and more complicated than you thought it was two years ago, and you happen to have some power, or something, that other people want to use.”
“But I’m just an ordinary girl. Patrick is the only special thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“There’s no such thing as an ordinary girl.”
There was a groan from the ground, and Patrick sat up. “Sofia,” he emoted, “what did she do to you?”
Sofia threw herself into his arms. “She didn’t hurt me. Kate saved me.”
Patrick stared at me with that confused look he gets when he’s trying to fit other people’s behaviour into his messed-up view of the world. “Thank you, Katharine, but this changes nothing between us.”
I sighed. “I can live with that. Just give me a lift home, and we’ll call it square.”
While Sofia and Patrick were having a tender reunion, I heard sirens in the distance and saw the flashing lights of the emergency services coming up the drive.
It looked like we’d miss our stealthy escape window, and speeding away past three fire engines and two police cars would look kind of suss.
“Patrick, you need to take care of this.”
He stopped staring longingly into Sofia’s eyes for half a second. “I do not have the authority. This is the Shaper’s territory.”
“Dude, for fuck’s sake, we’re standing outside a burning building full of dead bodies. If you don’t do something, we’re all going to jail for really quite a long time.”
He failed spectacularly to do something. One of the fire engines pulled up in front of the house, and people in uniform swarmed out and got to work.
A slight figure in a dark green waistcoat swung down from the back of the truck and sauntered over. It was Halfdan the Shaper, grinning and holding a fireman’s helmet under his arm.
“You do get around, don’t you, Miss Kane?”
Great. I had no idea what this guy’s deal was, but he’d tried to get me executed, so I didn’t think we were friends. “I get that a lot.”
Patrick stepped protectively in front of Sofia. At any moment I was expecting him to tell Halfdan to kill us and spare the girl.
Halfdan’s bright eyes gleamed in the firelight. “No hard feelings about the trial, I hope?”
“If I took it personally when people tried to kill me, I’d be really insecure by now.”
“Fantastic. Now, what the bollocking fuck is going on here?”
“Kill us if you must,” said Patrick. “But spare the girl. She is innocent.”
“I’ve spent a thousand years trying to avoid doing things I must. Which includes repeating myself. If one of you doesn’t tell me what happened, I’ll kill the girl just to ruin your day.”
I’d forgotten how bad Patrick was at dealing with people whose minds he couldn’t control. I made a nobody needs to die here gesture. “Okay, first of all, Sofia, Halfdan the Shaper, Halfdan the Shaper, Sofia. So can we all stop calling her ‘the girl,’ please.”
Halfdan gave a little bow. “A pleasure to meet you, Sofia. I do hope I won’t be eating you this evening.”
“Here’s the deal,” I rushed on. “Henry Percy woke up the Morrígan to distract you all while he turned himself into a god. He captured Sofia, we came here to rescue her, there was a fight and a fire, he’s probably dead in the library.”
I hadn’t quite had the balls to lie outright to him, but I was hoping I’d glossed over the Sofia is magic and special and probably delicious issue.
Halfdan peered at Sofia, grinning his too-big grin. “It’s remarkable, isn’t it, how many magical rituals need perfectly ordinary seventeen-year-old girls.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “It’s completely weird.”
He laughed. “Oh, you do entertain me, Miss Kane. I’ll handle this from here. If you’re not south of Sheffield by morning, I’ll kill all three of you. Just sort of because.”
He put his helmet on and strolled off to talk to the police.
Taking the hint, we headed back to Patrick’s Volvo, and I crawled gratefully into the back.
They played their mix CD all the way home. When Patrick didn’t need to change gears, they were holding hands.
I stretched out on the backseat, trusting Patrick’s supernatural reflexes to stop us crashing into anything while I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. It was only about seven o’clock in the evening, but I’d been in three fights and taken two five-hour car journeys, so I was kind of knackered.
Sofia looked tired as well. Nearly getting killed takes it out of you. I know from experience. But she seemed to hate me less now, which I shouldn’t have cared about either way, but kind of did. And the truth was, I kind of worried about her. Dating Patrick was bad enough, but discovering that you have exciting new supernatural powers and a bunch of people wanting to kill you makes it about eighty times worse. I knew that from experience as well.
I shut my eyes and took stock of the case. Not that it was a case so much as a bunch of stuff that happened. I’d stopped Percy, and I had a pretty good idea what he’d been up to. If I was really lucky, he’d be dead, but I’d be a fool to rely on it. Hopefully, the Council would be so pissed about the Morrígan, they would have him executed, but I suppose technically he was Halfdan’s problem now, and I knew better than to try and second-guess really old vampires, especially when they had a
reputation for being unpredictable.
There were a couple of little things that still nagged at me. I really wish I’d worked out what had happened to the golden mask, but it was probably somewhere in the wreckage. And Percy had gone down pretty easily for someone who was halfway towards being a god. But for all I knew that was how the ritual worked. I had a nasty feeling that Sofia being this glowy sun oracle thing was going to come back and bite somebody in the arse as well. Hopefully not her, but that was kind of out of my hands.
That’s the thing with this business. You go in thinking it’ll be about getting answers, but really, it’s about getting results. Sofia was basically okay and knew a bit more about who she was. Tash was probably getting her brother back. The Morrígan was sleeping again, and her army wasn’t rampaging around slaughtering people anymore. I’d cleared my name with the Council, and I’d paid my debt to the Merchant of Dreams. Corin had got away, but you can’t win ’em all. I reckoned I could live with that.
I got Patrick to drop me off at the Velvet. I should probably have gone home to bed, but I hadn’t really been able to have a girlfriend for the past fortnight and I wanted to see Julian.
The Velvet was back to its usually gaudy, glittering self. Ashriel was working the door in a Santa hat and, inside, Miss Parma Violet was presiding over Cabaret Baudelaire. I climbed the winding stairs to Julian’s balcony and found her sprawled on the chaise longue, in full black tie and a shiny top hat. For once, she wasn’t surrounded by an army of half-naked lesbians.
I leaned against one of the flaking golden pillars. “No kittens tonight?”
Julian turned my way and flicked up the brim of her hat. Her eyes gleamed very blue. “They’ll be along later, but I was hoping I’d see you first.”
“I’m probably not going to be very good company. I’ve been in a car with Patrick for ten hours.”
“No wonder you look so miserable. Come and sit down, sweeting, and I’ll see if I can balm your woes.”
“I’ve never heard it called that before.”
Julian lifted her legs gracefully out of the way and then plonked them back on top of me once I sat down. I idly slid a hand beneath the cuff of her trousers and stroked her bare, cold skin.