by Alan Baxter
Alex glared over his shoulder, his eyes alive with fury.
Silhouette held up both palms. ‘All right, easy there.’ She giggled. ‘Give it a go.’
Alex went into the front room. He pulled aside a decorative grate from an open fireplace and stuffed newspaper and kindling into the hearth from a large basket. Bigger logs of firewood were stacked neatly in a box beside it. Within a few minutes he had a fire raging, bright orange flames licking at the blackened bricks of the chimney. He felt Silhouette moving behind him. He looked around to see her standing in the hallway, one hand on the front door. ‘What are you doing?’
She seemed fairly amused by his actions. ‘Just being cautious.’
Alex deflated. ‘It’s not going to work, is it?’
Silhouette shrugged.
‘Fuck it!’ He pulled the book from his pocket. Magesign swam urgently around his hand and arm. Holding the book towards the flames he felt a flood of desperation and entertainment combined. The book had a presence, a personality almost, and it mocked him. Dared him. With a growl of anger he threw the small book into the dancing flames.
Nothing happened. The fire seemed to slide around the book without touching it. Then the flames bit and gathered across the smooth leather cover. The page edges began to blacken. Then spark.
Silhouette’s voice was concerned. ‘Er, Alex?’
Alex stood, backing away. ‘What’s it doing?’
‘Not exactly burning.’ The front door clicked open.
The book expanded, as though the fire filled it rather than burned it. The sparks became blue arcs of lightning, snapping and popping around it and the charcoaled wood it sat on. A feeling of pressure filled the room, like the air before a massive storm.
‘Alex, you might want to move further away.’
As a sharp, ear-drilling howl joined the lightning in the fireplace, he turned and ran, diving out the door as heat and light burst all around. Silhouette caught him as he flew through the air, pushed along by an explosive force that shattered the windows and blew the door from its hinges. Roaring flames bulged from the shattered frames and grasped the entire house in white hot fury.
Silhouette dragged him with her, forcing him to find his feet and run. ‘Move!’
Heads low, they charged away from the house as it exploded. Car alarms wailed and trees cracked as the masonry of the walls and roof rained down. Several houses either side of Welby’s split and collapsed. Windows on both sides of the street burst with orchestral rains of glass.
Alex and Silhouette ran for their lives, ducking around a corner as debris fell around them. Casting a glance back, Alex saw Welby’s street devastated as if an air strike had targeted it. They ran on for several more blocks before slowing to a walk, panting.
‘So much for any of Welby’s books being useful,’ Silhouette said.
Alex didn’t care. ‘I don’t think there’s a book anywhere that can help me.’ He reached into his jacket, pulled out the Darak Uthentia, completely unscathed.
Silhouette nodded. ‘I’m not surprised. I think that was a lesson in the futility of trying to destroy it.’
Alex winced, remembering his bag in Welby’s spare room. ‘All my stuff was in there, what little I had.’
Silhouette squeezed his shoulder. ‘It’s just stuff.’
He remembered the element book. That hurt most of all, as that had been a fine gift. But he’d read it all, twice, mesmerised by it, and the knowledge lived on in his mind. He could feel it there, nestled in his brain. It would take time to think on it, practise it, get to know it, but the book itself had become irrelevant. He felt some comfort in that. He had his wallet and phone in his pocket and the clothes on his back. Maybe, with his newfound powers, he didn’t need anything else after all. Of course, he had the Darak Uthentia too.
He felt desolate. ‘I can’t throw it away, I can’t give it away and I can’t destroy it.’
Silhouette made an apologetic face. ‘So keep it.’
‘No. This thing is evil. It approved of me killing Peacock. It urged me on. Fuck, Silhouette, it made me not care about killing a man until after I’d done it! What else can it do?’
Silhouette put a hand on his forearm. ‘Let’s go and see my Clan Lord. It might kill you, but that’s one answer, right?’
A white transit van slid to a stop at the corner. Two men sitting in the front seats watched Alex and Silhouette walking down the road.
‘Who are they then?’ asked the driver.
The man in the passenger seat drew on a cigarette. ‘Fuck knows. Doesn’t matter really. Sparks said to follow up on Peacock’s known associates. These two would appear to be connected.’
‘Why did they blow up Welby’s ’ouse?’
‘Dunno. Don’t really care. We came to ask Welby questions, but her ladyship will want to talk to this couple, I shouldn’t doubt.’
‘Shall we take ’em now?’
The man flicked his cigarette out the window, pulled a phone from his pocket. ‘I’ll call some boys. Follow them to somewhere more quiet. This road’s a bit busy.’
9
The Subcontractor stood in the doorway of the King’s Arms, his nose twitching. The aroma of beer inside and cigarette butts on the street muffled the trail. The general miasma of odours from the street added to the confusion — petrol, diesel, dust, piss. City grime coated everything, a skin of humanity lying over the land like a shadow. The Subcontractor closed his eyes, tipped his head back, sniffing. He let the scents that didn’t interest him slip away, searching out the unique fragrance of his quarry. Those two single strands of pheromone and psychic identity, one human, one Kin. He’d identified them around the corpse of Peacock, though that hadn’t been easy in a place of such intense activity.
It didn’t help when the whole scene was soaked in the stench of that idiot’s cum and his whore’s juices. What kind of freaks were they? He charged them extra because of the bizarre shit they always carried like baggage. They could pay it. What kind of professional would he be if he didn’t charge as much as he could for his unique skills? He charged extra for city work too. He hated working in cities, yet found himself invariably called to them. People seemed to sink to their lowest, commit their basest acts, when they lived in the highest densities.
A human male and a female Kin. Their trails came through more clearly as he emptied his mind of petty concerns. The trail that led him here had been weak, but a stronger one snaked away again. With a quiet hiss of pleasure he snapped his eyes open.
Two young men stood before him, strange expressions on their faces. ‘You all right, mate?’ one asked, all attitude and long hair.
The Subcontractor sneered. ‘Perfectly.’
Long Hair gestured at the doorway. ‘Mind if we come in?’
‘I don’t care what you do.’
The man laughed. ‘Right. Well, get the fuck out of the way then, eh?’ He elbowed his friend, who guffawed obligingly.
The Subcontractor’s eyes widened. If one thing really bothered him, it was a lack of respect. He was a small, wiry, strange-looking character, and people invariably underestimated him. ‘How about I eat your face?’
Long Hair barked a laugh, reaching for the Subcontractor’s shoulder, presumably to push him aside. That simply wouldn’t do. Long Hair staggered forward as his wrist was grabbed and pulled sharply. The Subcontractor stretched up, opening his mouth impossibly wide. He sank his teeth into Long Hair’s cheek and whipped his head away, spraying the man’s friend with blood and saliva. Long Hair screamed, collapsing to his knees. His friend staggered back, eyes terrified, mouth working soundlessly. Blood poured onto the dirty concrete of the path. Long Hair’s howls of agony and his friend’s frantic gibbering for help faded as the Subcontractor strolled away from the pub, chewing happily on the foolish man’s cheek. He kept the trail of the human and the Kin uppermost in his senses, following easily now he had a firm mental grasp on it.
Alex and Silhouette froze in their tracks as a white
van parked across the street some ten metres ahead of them. The side door slid open and two men trained guns on them.
‘What the fuck is this?’ Alex hissed. He turned to look back down the street and saw two more men, pistols in hand.
‘No side streets,’ Silhouette said, eyes scanning the quiet area. ‘They’ve got us pinned. Who are they?’
Alex ground his teeth, a dull rage swelling up from his belly. ‘I have no idea.’
The driver of the white van emerged and another man walked around the front from the passenger side. ‘Hello there,’ the passenger said in a broad cockney accent. ‘I’m Dan Butler and you’ll be coming with us.’
‘What is this?’ Alex asked. ‘What do you want?’
Butler grinned broadly, positioning himself between the two gunmen still perched in the van. The driver, moving off to one side, had a gun of his own drawn. Butler didn’t seem to consider the need for one himself. ‘We wanted to ask Patrick Welby some questions,’ Butler said. ‘But his ’ouse was all blown up and there’s you two running from the scene. So you’ll do.’
Alex frowned, wondering what the connection was. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy.’
‘Is that right?’ Butler said with a grin.
Alex looked back at the gunmen approaching from behind. ‘We can take this lot,’ he said quietly to Silhouette. ‘You can move fast enough, right?’ He felt empowered by his encounter with Peacock. He opened his vision, studying the shades around the men. Their colours were tense, nervous. He started mentally plotting a course of movement. ‘Can you deal with the ones behind us?’ he asked.
Silhouette gave him a look that froze his stomach. ‘Sorry, Alex. I don’t like guns.’ She stepped away from him, her hands up over her head. ‘If this boy’s in trouble, I want nothing more to do with him.’
Alex felt as though a knife had shredded his guts. ‘Silhouette, no.’
‘Really?’ asked Butler, his eyes suspicious.
Silhouette smiled disarmingly. ‘I’m just a working girl who was going to suck his dick. I don’t need this, so I’ll just walk away.’
Butler pointed one stubby finger at her. ‘We saw you run away with ’im when Welby’s ’ouse exploded.’
Silhouette kept moving away, heading towards the side of the street. ‘Yeah, that was all him,’ she said, pointing at Alex. ‘He takes me to this house, and I think that’s where we’re going to do the deed, but he sets it up to blow. Destroying evidence, he said. Thought it would turn me on to see how bad he was. You get all sorts. We only just made it out in one piece and I told him to fuck off, but he’s so desperate for a blow job he offered double if we went to a hotel. I need the money.’
Alex couldn’t believe his ears. Was she playing out some bizarre act? She didn’t seem to be placing herself anywhere advantageous. And her eyes had been so serious when she left his side, so final. What did I expect? Why should she help me? A part of him couldn’t blame her.
‘Shall I grab her?’ one of the men behind them said.
‘It’s true,’ Alex said. ‘Let her go.’ He strode forward a couple of paces, drawing the attention of the gunmen. ‘She’s nothing, just a hooker.’ He felt empty as he said it. From his periphery he caught the flash of movement as Silhouette ran, inhumanly fast.
Several pairs of eyes turned back to where Silhouette had been, faces registering surprise. Except Butler, who never moved his gaze from Alex. ‘Get after her!’ he barked.
The two men approaching from behind ran past, the men at the van still pinning Alex at several gunpoints. Within moments the men were back, panting for breath.
‘Nowhere,’ said one. ‘Just bleedin’ vanished.’
Butler flapped one hand. ‘Fuck this, we’ve still got you, eh? Now you’ll have more questions to answer. In the van, please.’
He was alone with six men, five guns. He had no plan against those odds. He felt the book urging him to lay waste about himself, felt the stone throbbing against him. But these men were too well positioned. On his own there was no way to take them all, or to escape and avoid the shots. For now he had no choice but to play along.
The Subcontractor stood at a taxi rank, frustrated. Modern transport constantly proved to be the bane of his life. But he wouldn’t be beaten. He remained patient as cab after cab travelled through. Every one he leaned in, sniffing, ignoring the driver’s protestations and outrage, before waving it away. It took a couple of hours before he finally found it, sweet and sour, the aroma of his prey. He got into the big black car. The driver half twisted in his seat. ‘Where to, mate?’
‘I need to know all the fares you’ve taken in the last few hours.’
‘You what?’
‘All the places you’ve been in the last few hours. Since, say, ten o’clock?’
The driver turned fully to stare at him. ‘Are you mental? I can’t remember that and I couldn’t tell you if I could.’
‘Why not?’
‘Confidentiality.’
The Subcontractor laughed. ‘You’re not a doctor. Tell me where you’ve been.’
The driver shook his head. ‘Just get out, mate. Find another bloke to be a nutter with. I’ve had it up to here already today.’
There were so many ways to get information, but he could do with this man not only telling him where he’d been, but taking him there too. The tried and tested methods were often the best. After all, those Black Diamond freaks could afford it. ‘How much?’ he asked.
The driver frowned. ‘For what?’
‘How much to remember all the fares you’ve had today?’
‘Oh, right. Well, that kind of memory ain’t cheap.’
‘A hundred pounds?’
‘Fuckin’ ’ell! Yeah, all right.’
‘How many couples have you had today? A man and a woman. The man is quite young and I imagine the woman would appear to be quite young too.’
The driver lifted his chin, defiant. ‘Money first, eh?’
The Subcontractor sighed. He pulled a wad of notes from the pocket of his long, dark coat, counted off five twenties. ‘How many?’
The driver eyed the cash ruefully. He probably regretted agreeing so easily to a hundred. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s been a few couples today. Mostly people on their own though.’ He stared up at the grubby lining of the cab roof, face twisted in thought. ‘There was a couple arguing about renting a flat. I took them to Highgate. Then, towards lunchtime, there was a couple wanted to go out towards Kensington. They both reeked of booze. Bit early I thought.’
The Subcontractor whipped up one finger. That rang true with the scent in his nose. ‘I’ll give you another twenty pounds if you drive me now on the exact route you took them, to the same location.’
The driver raised one eyebrow. ‘The fare’d be that on its own. What’s in it for me?’
‘The hundred I already gave you?’
The driver nodded towards the Subcontractor’s pocket. ‘I reckon you can stretch to a bit more than that, eh?’
Why were people always so greedy? This man might have lived to spend one hundred and twenty pounds. Now he would die with nothing. ‘What about another fifty?’
The driver grinned. ‘Lovely jubbly. Off we go then.’
He pulled away from the kerb and made a right turn. The Subcontractor cracked the window open a fraction, letting the odour drift in from the street, infinitesimal though it was. Like a shark homing in on a single drop of blood in a wide ocean, he hung on to the trail. Before long the cab pulled over.
‘I dropped them right here,’ the driver said.
The Subcontractor opened the door, leaned out close to the pavement. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So you did.’
A few minutes later he stared at the wreckage of the street. One house was nothing but a pile of scorched rubble, houses either side collapsed and ruined. Emergency services and police vehicles stood inside an area of over one hundred metres cordoned off at both ends, damage and debris everywhere. Television crews and newspaper report
ers swarmed around the yellow tape, calling out questions like seagulls cawing for chips.
The Subcontractor dabbed at his hands with a brown and scarlet stained handkerchief. Stuffing it deep into a coat pocket he turned, nose twitching. The trail, clearer now, led away from the bombed street. He turned and strolled along with it.
10
Alex stumbled into a walk-in fridge, shoved from behind by two nervous gunmen. They slammed the door and his breath puffed in frosty clouds as he fought to control his anger. He’d sat in the van staring down the barrels of five guns while Butler drove and talked to someone on a mobile phone, the words lost in the rattle of the road and the growl of the diesel engine. At no point had an opportunity presented itself for him to break free. He felt a certain pride that every man’s shades had been tinged with trepidation. They were genuinely scared of him, but they had guns and numbers on their side. He couldn’t blame Silhouette for deserting him. The odds had swung swiftly against them. He remembered her words in Welby’s lounge. I don’t owe you anything, Alex Caine.
The cold soaked into his bones, his body trembled with shivers. The whiskies from earlier had worn off, the chill and the fury sobering him up. ‘Keep him in the fridge,’ Butler had said. ‘Secure and cold, to slow him down a bit, eh?’
The rage in Alex broke suddenly free. He let the power of the Darak flood through his body and thrashed at everything around. He smashed shelves and hurled boxes of produce at the hard plastic walls. He pounded kicks into the thick, reinforced door, revelling as the plastic split and the hinges groaned. Insulating foam burst out in clouds of choking particles.
A voice hollered from the other side. ‘We will fucking shoot you!’
Alex paused, gasping for breath. His hands shook as vapour swam around his head.
‘You gonna calm down?’ the voice asked. ‘Seriously, we will hurt you. At the very least you’ll lose your knees.’
Alex tried to calm the rage that soaked his rational thoughts in a red veil. This wasn’t the time. He believed them when they talked about killing him. In the van their shades had clearly betrayed their willingness to pull the trigger. He’d considered setting them off, hoping he could avoid the bullets while they shredded each other, but hadn’t fancied his chances in the confined space.