She didn't know where Blaze had taken Jax, and was beginning to regret she hadn't confided in her first knight before setting off to find him. After nearly an hour down amongst the Bones walking along rows of cells and what could only be torture chambers, she was on the point of giving up when she heard something. A sound. Snuffling. It was pitiful. Without thinking, she started to run toward the sound but had to stop because each footstep was so loud in the cramped passages she completely lost track of where the sound was coming from and got turned about by the twists and turns.
"Jax," she called out. "Is that you?"
It took a moment, then a gruff voice grumbled, "Leave me alone."
That was all she needed.
Ashley found the door. There was a small wooden hatch she could open to peer inside. What there wasn't was a key to get Jax out. But Ashley wasn't about to be thwarted by a tiny little obstacle like that.
She didn't open the hatch. Not at first. She heard him prowling around behind the closed door. She took the compass from her patchwork satchel and scratched three words into the stone beside the door: I need you.
She put the compass back into her satchel, straightened her clothes, brushed an unruly lick of red hair out of her eyes, and counted to eleven, steadying herself. Only then did she open the hatch and held her torch up so that it illuminated the room beyond.
"You," Redhart Jax growled.
"Me," Ashley said.
"What do you want?"
"I want you to help me."
"Well that's not going to happen."
"I think it is," Ashley said. She wondered if she sounded as confident as she was trying to pretend she was. She was trembling, but Jax wouldn't be able to tell through the door. "I spared your life."
"Some life," the Occulator said, looking around his cell. He had a point. It wasn't exactly the Ritz.
"You opened a Moongate back to London when the others were closed. You didn't have to wait for the moons to align. How did you do it?"
"Feeling homesick are we, my Queen?"
"I asked you a question," she said, ignoring the jibe.
"And I asked you one. Tit for tat. You show me yours, I'll show you mine."
"No. That's not how this is going to work," feeling the familiar rumble of the masonry shifting and moving to accommodate Grimtooth. The Rock Troll's huge hand reached out, closing around Jax before he knew what was happening. He fought it, kicking and howling, but it didn't matter they were so far away from the rest of the world no one was going to hear him scream. "Now, I'm going to ask you again, and this time you are going to tell me or I'm giving you to Grimtooth. How did you do it?"
"I'm not going to tell you," Jax said defiantly.
"So be it. Grimtooth, take him into the wall. See if you can change his mind."
Jax's curses were muffled by the stone, and then finally silenced as he disappeared into the wall. Ashley waited, counting to ten, then twenty, thirty, forty, and so on, to three hundred and seven before Grimtooth thrust his huge fist—and clenched in it, Jax—back out through the wall.
The Wolfen spluttered and coughed and gagged as though trying to dislodge a furball. Ashley waited for him to stop, and then asked again, "How did you do it? And more importantly, can you do it again?"
"I can open a gate," he said, "Just please… please… I'm begging you, don't let him take me in there again."
"Not very pleasant, is it?" Ashley said. That was understatement of the year. "Unfortunately, I don't have a key so it's the only way we're getting you out of this place."
"You could try and sound a little less happy when you say that."
"I could," Ashley agreed. "Now, are you going to help me?"
"Not if it means going back into that wall, I'm not."
"I could just leave him in the wall, Ashkellion," the Rock Troll suggested unhelpfully.
"Well, what's it going to be, Jax?"
"What's in it for me if I help you? I mean, you're hardly going to let me go, are you?"
"There's no point in lying to you, Jax. The only way you are getting out of here is if hell freezes over."
"Then why should I help you?"
"Because it's the right thing to do."
"Not good enough."
"Because you owe it to—"
"I don't owe anyone," Jax interrupted. "We are done here. Have your pet troll kill me and be done with it."
"Grimtooth?" Ashley said, turning his name into a question.
"I could squeeze the life out of him one year at a time, if that is what you need?"
She shook her head. It was hopeless. She didn't know why she'd thought appealing to the Wolfen's better nature might make the difference. He had betrayed his own pack after all. He was hardly about to be guilted into helping her. "No, it's fine. Let him go. Let him rot down here for all I care."
"As you wish," but Grimtooth didn't let go of Jax. He drew his clenched fist back into the wall, and kept on drawing it back until every inch of Jax apart from the tip of his snout had disappeared into the wall. "There," the Rock Troll said. "Just enough for him to breathe through. Our friend will be alive for a long and painful time, especially if guards come to feed and water him."
"That's horrible!"
"It is no more or less than he deserves."
Jax's breathing was ragged. He was hyperventilating, drawing in short frantic breaths as panic took hold.
"I'll help you!" He bayed, finally. "I'll do anything! Please!"
"Will you open the Moongate?"
"Yes, yes, yes, anything. Just get me out of here."
"Answer my question first: how did you do it?"
"There's a mirror in my Den, it is linked to the eighth moon."
"And it can open the Moongates?"
"Yes. Yes. I swear."
"Take him to the Den. I will meet you there."
Grimtooth Stonewalker cupped his palm around Jax's snout and pulled him into the wall.
She found her mother with Blaze and the other guardians in the Dream Gardens, high up near the very top of the Shard of the Subluna. There were no flowers up there, so she wasn't sure how it got its name. Ephram appeared to be deep in thought over a game of chess, while Ratko seemed to be enjoying himself far too much at the old man's expense.
Ashley burst through the door, gasping for breath from the endless climb. "I can open a gate!"
That was enough to stop everyone dead.
"There's a mirror! In the Occulator's den!"
Blackwater Blaze nodded. "That is how he sent us through to your world, Ash."
"Then what are we waiting for? Lead on, my knight!"
She followed him down through the Shard, across a glass bridge between towers, until finally they reached the Den.
Grimtooth and Jax were already inside.
She didn't know what she expected, but the room was overflowing with beakers and pipettes and vast arrays of lenses of all shapes and sizes and so many mirrors she could see endless reflections of herself disappearing deeper and deeper into them.
Jax had already opened the portal home.
He stood beside the grand mirror, though the centre of it didn't show anything of the den in it. Instead, she saw the familiar outline of Eros, the statue at Piccadilly Circus and a red bus going around the corner. In other words, home.
She looked at Ephram and Targyn. They nodded.
She looked at her mother. Meghan reached out and took her hand.
"It's not forever," she told them.
"Nothing ever is," the old man said. "And we know where to find you."
"Besides, it's not as though you'll be alone," Targyn said, "We left some good people over there to look after you, but don't believe a word Molokai says, he's quite mad. And despite appearances, Hobb's a sweetheart. Don't let him bully you into doing anything you don't want to. Grigorii, well, a few surprises could be good for you. I'll let you see for yourself." She hugged her. Hard. "Time to go, Ash," she said finally letting go.
"I woul
d come back with you, if you want me to?" Paget said from the doorway, "After all, who would cook for you if I wasn't around?"
Ashley grinned. "Saved from dad's microwave dinners? Score. Well, ladies, shall we?" When neither of them moved, she added, "Age before beauty."
"Cheeky scrap," Paget said, smiling. "Let's go home."
Together, Paget and Meghan went through the mirror.
Ashley started to follow them, but Blaze stopped her. "Might I have a moment alone, before you go?"
She nodded, and taking his hand, walked out into the hall.
He looked as though his entire world was coming unravelled at the seams but was determined to put a brave face on it.
"I have this for you," he gave her a mirror he had scavenged from the clutter of Jax's workshop. "So you will always be able to reach me," he said, not quite looking her in the eye. "I am your first knight, after all. How else will I be able to protect you?"
"You are so much more than that," she said, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss a boy for the second time in her life. "Come with me," she said, breathlessly. Not thinking about what she was asking.
Blaze didn't say anything for the longest time, and she realised that he was going to say no. She didn't want to hear it. She raised a finger to his lips to keep the silence. He kissed it. "I am only through the looking glass," he said, meaning that had to be enough. "And you will always be here," he put his hand over his heart. "But that is not my world. The lack of magic, the pain, I would lose my mind."
"I will miss you." Ashley was crying as she slipped the mirror into her patchwork satchel. She stood on tiptoes, and kissed him on the blaze of white fur that gave him his name. "Tell me that you'll miss me too."
He did better than that. Blaze swept her into his arms and kissed her, a kiss full of longing, yearning and sorrow. It was the most bittersweet moment of her young life. When it ended she saw the tears glittering in his eyes. He didn't need to tell her anymore.
"My Lancelot," she said. And as much as it hurt to turn her back on him, she did.
THIRTY-SIX
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
The sickness walked in the Skin-Changer's body through the unfamiliar streets of London. The smells were so wrong, so intense and so overpowering he thought his head was going to explode from sensory overload.
He had sent the Nightgaunt back to his arcade with orders to recuperate. He would need it fighting fit before long.
No rest for the wicked.
People were beginning to look at him, he realised. That was the price of walking in a dead man's body. It started to stink. And when it stank it started to draw unwanted attention. He found a quiet place, on a bench overlooking a playground where young children ran and tumbled and got up again to run some more. He sank down onto the seat, just another bum in a city filled with the homeless down-and-outs, opened his mouth, and leaked out into the air in a fine black mist.
No one noticed.
He knew where he needed to go. The images of the street and the house were still vivid in the dead man's mind. They wouldn't be difficult to find.
He drifted through the streets until he found the right one, then coiled and curled along the gutter weaving a path between the speeding wheels, until he found the door. A door was no protection. And the only wardings they had in place were set to stop creatures like the Wolfen. Nothing so simple could ever stop him. He spun and climbed up the drainpipe, to the bathroom window, which was open a crack, and slipped through.
There was a man inside.
He coiled around the man, around his face, and into his mouth and nostrils as, gripped by panic, the man tried to fight the sickness off.
He didn't stand a chance.
The sickness stretched, swelling to fill up every blood vessel, every ounce of muscle and bone, of this new body, trying it on for size.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
Yes, this would do.
Fear made it difficult, but he found his name in the man's memories: Daniel Hawthorne. This was his life. He saw it all, his wife, his daughter, the job, the travelling, all of the mundane stuff he didn't care about. He only cared about the girl. Ashley Hawthorne. Ashkellion.
He was glad he was alone in the house. It gave him time to sift through his host's memories to lean his mannerisms and how he spoke. It was essential to know the man if he was going to live as him for any length of time.
He went to familiarise himself with the rest of the house.
He was in the bedroom, staring at a half-finished map of the Moonlands painted on one of the walls, when the door downstairs slammed. He heard voices and called, "I'm up here!"
Which was greeted by a cry of, "Hey Dad!" and the clatter of feet as the girl came running up the stairs.
Ashley flung the door open, came running across the room and threw herself into his open arms. He breathed her in, his pulse quickening. Her blood was so strong. He could barely control himself. He placed his lips against the side of her neck and tasted the salty tang of her sweat. With a supreme effort of will, he let her go.
"Do you want to tell me what happened in your world today?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
"You wouldn't believe me if I did."
"Try me." He patted the spot beside him. "Come to daddy."
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