The Devil's Poetry

by Louise Cole

“So why isn’t it blowing up now?”

  I thought some more. “The book? The book is acting as a . . . a conduit. An interface.”

  I thought of my father chopping herbs, how much I loved him and wanted to protect him, and there he was, on the screen, worn and creased, my photo crumpled in his hand.

  “I can work this,” I whispered. I stood up. It was all energy—that’s what Ella had said. My mum would have been the first Reader to live around computers. I wonder if she could fry their circuits, too.

  I could use this.

  “Jace, you have to get me somewhere with TV cameras or broadcasting. I know how to do this now.”

  On the TV, the newsreader was talking about the National Guard being sent onto the streets.

  “We don’t have much time. I don’t know if it’s the Cadaveri or just people feeling desperate but they’re tearing the world apart out there. I need to read somewhere relatively close. Then, even if I fail to project, at least I might affect the talks.”

  He breathed out slowly. “There’re mobile TV stations about half a mile from here.”

  “Where?”

  “Right outside the peace talks.” He pointed at the TV, and, sure enough, the broadcasters were standing in a crowd outside the side entrance of Canada House. They were surrounded by soldiers. “They’re all waiting for an announcement.”

  “They’d be hooked to the Internet as well?”

  “I assume most of them have live web feeds these days.”

  I thought about it. “We’d never get through the guards.”

  “Behind those guards is the safest place in London right now. There’s still widespread rioting.”

  “Are there Cadaveri around the Square?”

  “Not right now. I suspect they’ll be drawn like moths to a flame if you move out there.”

  I took a deep breath. “So I have to get through riots, Cadaveri, a platoon of soldiers, and the international press corps, and then do a reading.”

  Jace quirked his mouth. “Don’t forget your sniper.” His phone vibrated. He glanced at it. “Your dad’s safe. Miles is heading back to the States soon, but he says good luck.”

  I lifted the curtain and looked down at the ravaged street. “We’re going to need it.”

  He turned away, but I sidestepped around him, running the flats of my hands up his chest. “You never did answer me. Not really.”

  He hesitated and then lifted a single finger to my face. “Callie, I can love you, or I can do my job. Don’t ask me to do both. Please.”

  ***

  Jace gave up on the laptop and made me memorize the route on Google Maps from his phone with strict instructions to keep my hands in my pockets. Then he threw everything nonessential into his sports bag, apart from his leather-encased sword, and called the concierge.

  “I need these two items shipped home. The second is extremely valuable.” He pressed the relevant paperwork and fifty quid into the guy’s hand.

  “Certainly, sir. We’ll take care of it right away.”

  All Jace had left was a small blue rucksack. All I had was a book.

  I tried to smile. “Ready to keep me safe one last time?” I willed my voice not to break. In truth, the thought of imminent death scared me less than the thought of leaving Jace. The idea of saying goodbye to him was exquisitely painful. I looked at his beautiful face with those deep green eyes and knew that whatever happened to me after that was merely detail.

  “Of course.”

  We stepped outside the calm luxury of the hotel, and the world went all to hell.

  Chapter 27

  The noise hit me like a punch. Yelling, banging, rifle shots, breaking glass.

  Jace ignored it. “You know the way, right?”

  I rolled my eyes at him. He’d forced me to memorize it.

  “It’s about five minutes if you run,” he said. “If I get held up, you go, you understand me?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled me after him into the street, keeping me between his body and the buildings. There was no traffic. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road, windscreens smashed, alarms blaring. A black cab was skewed onto the pavement, its far bumper crumpled against the rear end of a bus.

  It was as though every pub had discharged its drunken occupants onto the street at once. Groups danced down the road, lobbing rocks into shop fronts and racing in to pull out goods too heavy for them to carry. Further ahead a mob was clashing with riot police who were holding their ground, transparent shields locked.

  “Hell will freeze over before we get through that,” I muttered, ducking as Jace brought up his forearm to block a blow from a young bloke in a ripped tracksuit who tried to tear his bag off his shoulder.

  He looked ahead even as he caught the lad by the collar and dragged him to eye level. “Run,” he said to him. The wannabe thief sprinted away.

  I gripped the book tightly inside my jacket pocket. My head still hurt, a needle-like pain through my temples. Images of what we’d been through, my dreams, the faces of the dead, kept playing behind my eyes.

  Ahead of us, the police ranks broke open. Some of the shields charged forward. Others fell back, pelted by missiles, and rushed by the yelling crowd. One man squirted lighter fluid on a policeman and threw a match. The officer staggered away, ripping at his flaming jacket.

  Jace dipped his head toward the middle of the road. “You ready to run through that gap?”

  We moved as fast as we could through the debris, jumping smashed electrical goods, crunching over broken glass, and skirting the worst fights.

  Men fought with an animal savagery, using everything that came to hand as a weapon. I tried not to look; a man beat another’s face against the curb, one had his knee in someone’s back yanking the arm back beyond breaking point. I wanted to scream at them to stop, but it would have done no good.

  Directly ahead of me were four Cadaveri, about twenty meters away. Their white eyes shone, reflecting back the sporadic flames and the black luster of the riot helmets. The police cordon dissolved around them. People ran, screamed, threw themselves on the ground, and ripped at their own clothing as though they too were burning.

  An African savannah opened in front of me, and I took a tentative step forward onto ice, a bird swooping low against my head. An eagle. The eagle’s flight.

  “Callie!”

  “Yes,” I replied, pulling myself back to the present, to the gray concrete of London.

  “I’ll make an opening,” said Jace. “You’re going to have to run through it.”

  I swallowed and then ducked as a man to my left roared, swinging down a four-foot lump of wood. It cracked off the ground where I had been standing. Jace spun on the ball of his foot, planting a roundhouse kick so fast it blurred, and then smacked his palm into the face of another. Their expressions distorted, leering and snarling. They seemed to recognize no one, have no allies. It was every man for himself.

  Jace continued to punch and deflect the rioters. I followed him as closely as I dared without getting in the way. Then three of them came at once, perhaps sensing a challenge. In movies, people fight one at a time, the hero knocking an assailant back before a comrade steps up in his place. Not here. All three men lunged, and I glimpsed the metallic glint of a knife in one hand. Jace blocked it and threw a savage uppercut into another man’s midriff, sending him reeling backward. I froze as the third man brought down a stave of wood across Jace’s shoulder, but, before I could see if he was hurt, a hand twisted my arm hard up my back.

  “What have we here then?” a voice rasped in my ear, and I found myself thrown into an alleyway, my back slammed into the brickwork, knocking the wind out of me. “Right little prize, aren’t you?” The man was middle-aged but muscular, his torn T-shirt revealing faded tats all over his upper body. His breath stank of booze and tobacco. I tried to balance myself, stiffening my knees, but they were like jelly. I didn’t watch his hands, though—I kept my eyes firmly fixed on his. I had learned that much.


  He launched himself at me, grabbing my shirt, and I kicked him hard. “Bitch,” he spat and threw a hard punch at my head, but sobriety and adrenaline gave me an edge, and I ducked at the last moment, his fist smashing into the wall. He screamed in pain. I wondered briefly who he had been before this madness, but realized I didn’t care. He straightened up, his eyes murderous. His good hand lunged for my neck, and he almost made it, a handful of jacket in his grasp. He flung me at the other wall, and I let myself go limp, unresisting. The impact hurt less this time, and I used the momentum to spring straight back and slam him in the throat the way Jace did. He gagged and buckled slightly. Before he could recover, I kicked him hard between the legs, and he went down. I turned to run, but Jace was at my side.

  “You’re seriously scary for a girl.” He grinned.

  “Are you OK? That man . . . ”

  He cut me off. “It’s a scratch.” His jacket was ripped on the shoulder. “Now for the hard part. You ready?”

  I walked behind him back into the road. There were a few prone bodies, mostly groaning to themselves, but the way was pretty clear. I wondered how much Jace had to do with that. There was the softest noise, and I saw Jace had drawn a six-inch knife. It glimmered at his side.

  The Cadaveri advanced slowly. They knew I was here. I was sure they could smell the book in my pocket. I tried to think. Jace would have to hold the attention of all four, or at least one of them would follow me. My palms became slick with sweat, my mouth dust-dry. I tried to swallow and couldn’t. We stalked cautiously, deliberately, up to one another. The Cadaveri stood directly between me and the Strand, the road leading to the peace talks. I risked a look behind and could see no others, but they would be there, for certain, if I tried to run back.

  They were so close now I could see the stitching on one of their jackets. They didn’t seem to want to make the first move. The suspense was excruciating. As I wondered how close we would have to get, Jace moved his hand. The Cadaveri closest to him fell dead instantly, but two others rushed in, their curved daggers at chest height. Jace pulled two more knives from his coat and dodged under the first blade, flicking his knife up to slice deep into the creature’s chest. It fell away, howling, and the third engaged him, slashing toward his belly. The fourth carried on his calm, deliberate way toward me, dagger unsheathed.

  “Jace!” I screamed, backing off but not daring to run. My foot slipped, and I risked a glance down. I was treading in a stream of blood.

  The creature locked his eyes to mine, the white irises lighting up the night like Halloween lanterns. Then he moved so fast I barely saw the blade as it sliced upward cutting the air with a sibilant sigh. It never reached me. He gurgled, spluttered, and fell at my feet, a small knife quivering in the back of his neck.

  I stepped over the body. Jace fought on, rubbing the sweat from his eyes with a brusque wipe of his sleeve. I had to help him.

  “Callie, go!” he yelled. I hesitated. Perhaps if I took the Cadaveri’s sword . . . “Go NOW!” he roared at me, and I took off, my trainers thudding over the pavement as fast as I could go but still slower than my pounding heart.

  Chapter 28

  When the blood rises

  The heart wakens

  And the mind opens like a flower to the sky

  Then you shall see that all is alive

  And all is light.

  The book

  Sanders leafed through the new intelligence reports, the Foreign Office reports, the Canadian dossiers. There must be something he could use. Some bargaining chip they had overlooked. Once again, he came up blank. These pages held nothing except entrenched positions and a history of hatred and hurt.

  He checked his watch. He had all but begged the ministers on both sides for one last session. The Pakistani Defense Minister had taken ill, but the others had agreed. His time was almost up. And he had nothing to show for it.

  ***

  I was being chased, I knew, but I only had four hundred yards to go. The Strand was deceptively long, but I recognized landmarks as they flew by. The Strand Palace Hotel, the Adelphi, the Savoy, all memorized from Jace’s phone. I kept my head down and ignored the fighting and the chaos, my legs pumping, feet slamming into the concrete like hammers. My lungs burned, and my diaphragm pulled hard in my side like it would snap. I wouldn’t look back. Jace would be OK. He would. I didn’t want to know who was following me or how many there were. I couldn’t fight them anyway. I could only run.

  My head fizzed like a Coke bottle about to explode. The pressure grew unbearable. The street started to melt and merge, edges wavy, an underwater vision. The landscape kept shifting: a Mediterranean village, sand under my feet as a leather-faced man in a yurt watched me intently, a balcony overlooking snow. I wrenched myself back as my feet skittered out over nothing. I slid and banged into a wall. Still concrete. Still London. I fought forward. Still running.

  I was so pants-wettingly scared that even the Cadaveri’s despair couldn’t touch me now. I just had to move my legs. Keep moving my legs. I could see the press corps behind their human shield. Thirty seconds. Twenty. I was almost there.

  ***

  Cyrus gripped the metal railing, wheezing heavily. There were soldiers and a babble of journalists on the far side of the road. He kept out of sight. He could not keep up with Wulf and Sailor. They had raced down the back alleys of the West End with a score of others to cut the Reader off. She wouldn’t make it this far. His left leg dragged, the muscle refusing to bear his weight. He was superfluous. He may as well die now as later.

  His head hurt. He slumped. The pain abruptly grew worse, searing, branding the inside of his skull. He hit his head against the steel, cursing. Only when he felt the scalding purity of the pain did he realize its cause. The music rushed toward him. He opened his eyes. It surged up the street toward him, a huge, growing wave, a tsunami bearing down upon him. Running feet slapped the pavement.

  There she was. The Reader, spilling music as she ran straight toward him. She hadn’t seen him. He doubted she could see anything by now, the music was so bright and hard. Cyrus edged forward, fingers locked around the hilt of his blade.

  ***

  The sniper eased his neck from side to side. Four hours he’d waited behind the ornate railing of a third-floor balcony window overlooking Canada House. Four hours of boredom and agony, unable to shift his position by more than inches. Four hours for the girl to try again.

  He wouldn’t get distracted this time. Shooting into the crowd had been fun, he couldn’t deny it, and he hadn’t been caught, but it was unprofessional. This time his focus would be unbreakable. He slipped his ear plugs back in, regulated his breathing, and eased down over the scope of the rifle.

  He caught movement in his peripheral vision. Ah, too easy. She ran straight down the middle of the street, no attempt to hide. He locked on and eased his finger over the trigger.

  ***

  I didn’t want to run into anyone’s line of sight. I threw myself to the ground about ten feet from the soldiers. A shot rang out over my head, hitting a news van above me. Shit. I rolled under the van, scrabbling forward across the rough tarmac. My jacket snagged on something, and I pulled the book from my pocket and shrugged out of the coat. I glimpsed up at the crowd of reporters, and, more crucially, the guards. They were looking out, not down. My best chance was to go through their legs.

  I wriggled forward slowly, squeezing out between the edge of the van and the curb. Thank God I was skinny. I inched across the empty pavement on my elbows and hips, dragging my legs behind me. As I reached the line, it broke above me, people stamping and jostling. The reporters’ voices, a Babel of languages talking incessantly to their screens, became high-pitched, the cameras swinging erratically. I threw my arms over my head and tried to scramble up. Someone trod on my leg, and I howled. The soldiers broke rank and ran forward, firing into the crowd.

  Cadaveri.

  I dragged myself to my feet, pulling hard on arms and legs in the cr
ush of bodies, the book in a death grip, and fought my way inside. I crawled up the steps to the doors of Canada House.

  They all carried on making their reports. I yelled above the din, but no one heard me.

  I needed some contact with their equipment, something I could hold. I heard my name, and Jace slid across the bonnet of the news van, ducking behind the cordon. He grabbed a cable and yanked it hard. The microphone flew out of a man’s hands, and Jace caught it.

  “Hey, what the hell are you doing?” The reporter ran at Jace, straight into a palm strike, which snapped the man’s head up and back. Jace sprang to my side.

  This was it. I kissed him. “Don’t be sad, Jace,” I whispered. “Be proud.”

  I closed my fist around the microphone. In a heartbeat, the monitors fizzled and died and the bevy of reporters, producers, and cameramen swung as one toward us.

  I retreated until my back pressed against the door.

  “If you’re still wondering,” he murmured, “you’re my shield.” And he sprang onto the bottom step, knives in hand, to defend me.

  ***

  The cameras, as one, swung toward me like loaded guns, their technicians still swearing and fumbling at the loss of power.

  “Are you a protester?” asked one.

  “Do you object to the peace talks?”

  I finally had their attention. I spoke the first words in my mind, conjuring Amber and my dad and my beloved soldier. It caused a little burst of power, enough to reanimate the TV equipment and for the green lights to snap back on their monitors.

  “We’re connected!” yelled a voice.

  So am I, I thought. I’m connected to everything. Always. We all are. I remembered the twisted, lonely faces of the men fighting in the streets and my dad lost and captive in his grief and the despair of the Cadaveri. My heart swelled with compassion for them like it would burst. It had to end.

  I wiped my sweaty hand on my shirt to better grip the microphone. The book was in my right hand, still closed.

  Rocks crashed against windscreens and walls. In the streets, soldiers fired at the rioters and the Cadaveri.