Behind me I hear Coleman scoff, “Damn Ruskies couldn’t hit a bus.”
But he’s wrong. I know he’s wrong. As Lenin chokes up another ball of lightning and spits it in the same direction. As pigeons wheel away. I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen Clyde do this.
In front of me, Felicity pauses, aims her gun.
“Keep moving!” It’s my turn to pull her along.
She fires wildly. “Fuck!”
Behind me there is the sound of bronze grinding on rock. A dull dry scrape in the middle of the monsoon. Something growls.
“No time!” I’m trying to explain it all, all the danger, my fear, my need for her safety as I pull against her. As my feet slip and slide over wet stone.
“What in the name of shit?” I hear Coleman shout.
“Sinsdale!” Tabitha is yelling for no apparent reason. “Sinsdale!” It sounds like she’s taking the name of a very interesting experimental thaumaturgist in vain.
The tall Russian is still talking into his bullhorn. “We only need one of you alive to deliver the message,” the phone tells me. I don’t need it to tell me he’s chuckling.
“Let go!” Felicity struggles against me. “Let me fucking go.”
I let her go.
“I need a clean bloody shot, you imbecile.”
“I need you not to get gutted.” I know what’s coming. A body shot isn’t going to cut it.
She turns, goes down on one knee, sights down the barrel.
A roar obliterates the world. I turn. From the left. It’s coming from the left. A lion. The symbol of the empire hewn in glistening bronze. Spray makes a white halo around its metal mane.
Felicity doesn’t even flinch. It’s coming right at her, and she doesn’t move a muscle.
She’s going to get her shot and then she’s going to die.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I slam into Felicity. My full body weight. She sprawls. The lion doesn’t hesitate for a moment.
Time grinds then. As if the tall Russian hit me with one of his gelatinous balls of messed up space. I can see the bronze muscles rippling in the lion’s back as it closes on me. I can see its metal skin stretching as its jaws open. The rain spattering against its back. I can hear Shaw cursing as her shot goes wide again. I can hear Tabitha still shouting, “Sinsdale! Sinsdale!” over and over again. I even have time to wonder if the stress has finally gotten to her.
And Clyde too. I can hear him, something barely audible under the crackle of lightning, the bark of the gun, the shattering echo of the roar. Nonsense words. Syllabic salad. The language of magic.
“Mel forum kel ashtium fer fillum.”
There is a horrendous scraping noise. A screech. A scream from the lion. Its jaws widen further, further. They do not stop. The seam of its mouth goes back, back, back, stretches down the length of its body. A great gash from mouth to tail. Like a blade slicing the thing in two. Like it collided with an enormous, invisible knife.
Sinsdale.
That’s what… Tabitha… Clyde… Sinsdale. That trio just saved my life.
Except while Sinsdale chops, he still can’t stop several tons of bronze from careening on through the sky.
Two inert slabs of metal fly at my head. One falls, one rises. There is no time to crawl away but I try it anyway. All I have time for is falling backwards, toppling. As the top half of the dead lion skims over my head. The world rings from the collision. A hot line of blood and grazed skin across my scalp.
The bottom slab hits the ground, the edge driving into the paving slabs in a great spray of rainwater and stone chips. The slab tilts up, a great black monolith teetering before me. I stare at it bewildered, dumbfounded.
Gravity does its thing. It starts to fall.
Something hits me from the side. Felicity. She kicks me. Both feet. Right in the side. And I’m winded, and I’m falling, skidding through puddles, and I’m still a little bit wounded she called me an imbecile when all I was doing was trying to save her life. And then I’m hitting the floor, my cheek and nose mashing against the rocks, as the second half of the lion slams to earth.
Two tons of bronze lies between Felicity and I. Cold, dead, rain strafing its length.
And I am alive, to stare at it. And Felicity is alive, on the other side of it, staring back at me.
And then behind her…
“Duck!” I yell.
And she does. The ball of warped space, and time, and whatever rolls over her head. Behind her I see the tall Russian, hands outstretched.
Missed again, you fuck.
Not that that really matters. As the ball collides with the slab of metal.
Metal. What did metal used to be? Ore?
The slab ripples, cracks. Enormous waves of heat suddenly coming off it. A red glow emanating from the widening cracks, spreading, infusing the whole thing. Steam boils off it. And still it ripples, wobbles, like jello.
A blob of steaming red metal falls to the earth with a hiss and a splat. A paw oozes towards me.
After it was ore. Before it was a statue. Molten metal. Solid metal was molten metal.
I scramble away, crab crawling backwards. Through the steam and the heat I see Felicity rolling away from the spitting red mess, towards the Russians, away from me.
Lightning flares again. Again. I hear another roar. Another.
Four lions, one at each corner of the column. We’ve only taken one of them down.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but I bloody hate magic.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I take cover behind a plinth that once held a lion. Rain drips down my nose. I hold my gun up next to my head and unsuccessfully try to imagine this is a scene Escape from New York.
There is a scuffle of limbs from above. I kick back and away from the stone. A decidedly unheroic grunt bursts out of me. A grunt and a half yell from someone out of sight. I blink water from my eyes and try to stare down the pistol sights.
Clyde’s head appears, his hood pushed back, sodden hair matted to his mask. He collapses over the plinth into an untidy pile of limbs. I collapse next to him.
“Magical metal cats,” I say as he unfolds. “Last week extradimensional brain parasites used them attack us, and now these sodding Russians. I can’t believe our bloody luck.”
Flippancy is a good way to keep the fear at bay.
“The aliens used panthers, though,” Clyde says. “These are lions. Kings of the jungle. Totally different ball game.”
“Panthers?” I say to him. “I always thought of them as tigers.”
This is the conversational equivalent of hysteria. Things are going to shit fast. I need to focus, need a plan.
“We get any of the Russians yet?” I ask him. Gather information. Ask the right questions. Do detective work. Of a sort.
Clyde shakes his head.
“They get any of us yet?”
“Not for lack of trying. Enthusiastic bunch, I have to say.”
I nod. A plan. Shock and awe. That’s what Coleman said. It’s what the Russians used. Worked for them too. We did not anticipate the lions. We probably should have, but we didn’t. We need to do something they’re not expecting.
I poke my head around the corner, try to assess the scene. Coleman and Felicity are crouched together near a fountain taking potshots at Proto-Lenin but the amazing anorak boy is holding them down with lightning. Kayla is set apart, battling with the blond woman who has apparently strayed too close to Devon and the van. She flicks her sword lazily at the woman, batting her away.
Stab her, I find myself willing, but Kayla seems satisfied with slaps of the blade, knocking the woman off-balance, beating her back, but refusing to advance.
“You see Tabby?” Clyde asks. “I’m trying to remember the words to The Wall, but I’ve forgotten them.”
“I’m pretty sure they involve them kids being left alone by teachers.” I’m not helping, I know.
Clyde shakes his head. “That came about four hundred years after t
he version I’m looking for. Not Romanian enough either.”
We need to get back to Felicity and Coleman, to regroup. To get Kayla to actually fight. And where is Tabitha?
Shock and awe.
I need to take one of them down. I have to. I have to find a way to get close. Except they’re standing in the middle of an empty square and they’ve got most of the cover prowling around and attacking us.
“You a hundred percent sure there’s no way for you to teleport me next to someone?”
Clyde says something which is less sarcastic than I deserve, but I’m not really listening. The tall Russian is in the center of the square. The ringleader, I think. And if there’s no way to sneak up on him… Well I only see one way to get close to him.
“Clyde,” I say.
“Yes?”
“Cover me.”
“Whatever with?”
I’d reply, but apparently I decided to hurdle the plinth about two seconds too early. Now all that’s left to do is put my head down, charge, and regret it.
TWENTY-NINE
The Russian sees me coming when I’m five yards away. I’m closer than I thought I’d get.
Lightning flares.
Two yards away. I leap. A full body tackle.
The lightning doesn’t stop. It hits me as I hit the Russian. There is a crack like the world ending in my face. Everything is white and weightless.
Then I come down, crack against the stones. My head rings. Pain floods me. I can see the tall Russian lying on the ground twenty yards away. His jacket is smoking.
And what the hell was that? Some transmutation spell to turn all my muscles into spaghetti? I flop over onto my belly. Rain stops running into my nose. God, I knew I was going to get electrocuted again.
Footsteps. I try to twist, see who’s coming to finish me off.
It’s Clyde, crouched low.
“Arthur? Arthur?”
I grunt at him.
“I think you may have attracted some undue attention.” Clyde suddenly looks over my shoulder, flings out his arms. I watch as the tall man flies ten feet back through the air, lands in a haze of rain spray.
And that seems to take care of that problem.
Except…
The first lion comes out of the rain to my right. Clyde hauls me to my feet, stoops to let me put an arm over his shoulder. We turn. And there’s another. We turn. The third.
They circle us. Metal tails stretched out behind them, whipping back and forth. Heads down low.
I remove my arm from Clyde’s shoulder. It turns out my knees still work. I rest my hands on them, doubled over, still breathing hard. Everything hurts. How can everything hurt all at once?
Clyde circles me.
“You think a gun would work?” I say glancing down at the pistol.
“Not really.”
“You know,” I say, “sometimes a little false optimism wouldn’t go astray.”
God, I hate these Russians. I mean, yes, we saved the world the other day, but these guys look like they’re operating in a whole different league. All of them are magicians. We have Clyde. And Clyde… well, as much as I like him, the Russians animate stone lions, he animates Winston…
“I think I’m going to try that wall spell.” Clyde has his back to me, looking at a street leading away from the square.
“You remember the words to it now?”
“Not really.”
“What happens if you get it wrong?”
“Depends how wrong I get it.”
“Best-case scenario?” Though in my experience there is rarely a best-case scenario with magic involved.
“The lions eat us.”
That may be a worse best-case scenario than usual.
Clyde slips another double A under his mask. A lion roars. The circle tightens.
“They don’t like that, Clyde.” I’m surprised to find I can still sink deeper into fear.
“Then they really won’t like this.” He lowers his head, collapses in on his chest, knees bending, body sagging. “Fellum mahrat mel cthok,” he mutters.
The lions stop pacing. Slowly they start to turn.
“Messum ex locinun.”
The lions are done circling. This is it. I aim my gun futilely. One bunches its back legs.
“Clyyyyyde!” My voice rises in volume and pitch.
“Tellat al reium.” Clyde straightens, stiffening his body violently, flinging his arms out. “Masrat!”
A line of spray races out from Clyde’s body, billowing up from the ground. There is the sound of rain drumming against something invisible and massive.
But then the time to ponder what Clyde’s done is over. A lion roars. Leaps. Another leaps.
Bronze jaws. Bronze claws. Closer. Closer.
Three feet from my face it slams into something. Stops dead in the air, arse tumbling over shoulders. The second one collides with it. Stone chips fly.
Clyde reels back as the lions slump to the ground.
“Nice!” I’m still staggering, legs still struggling to bear my weight, but I clap Clyde weakly on the shoulder.
“Still got the third one behind us.”
“Oh shiii…” I turn. It smiles at us. And grandma, what big teeth you have.
“Run!” Clyde yells. “Run!”
It’s very good advice. I ignore it.
I open fire. Bullets whine off the things muzzle. One chips a tooth. It keeps on grinning.
“RUN!” Clyde bellows.
But the thing is, I can’t hurt this lion. I brought a pistol to a metal lion fight. I am seriously out of my weight class. The only person here that can make the lion take notice, I think, is Clyde. Which means it’s important Clyde doesn’t get turned into someone’s dinner. Which means that I have to distract the bloody thing. Which unfortunately means upping the chances that I’m today’s appetizer of choice.
The lion roars. The force of it blows back my hair, blows rain drops off my face. And when it comes to shock and awe, well that is how one does it.
I glance over at Felicity still trading potshots with other Russians.
“Clyde,” I say, “you better not screw this up.”
In defiance of every urge in my body, I step towards the lion.
THIRTY
“Arthur,” Clyde says, a warning note in his voice. “I’m relatively sure that’s not the whole running thing I was advocating. I mean, not an athletic expert here, but—”
The bark of my pistol cuts him off. I aim for the lion’s eyes as best I can. I have no idea if it needs them to see, but it’s the most annoying place I can think to target.
“Come on you, big bastard.” I know it can’t hear me, but saying it makes me feel better. “Come to poppa.”
My knees still feel weak. I would feel much better about this plan if I had, say, dedicated the past thirty-four years of my life to actually exercising on a regular basis.
The lion roars once more.
I put a shot down its throat.
And that does it.
It comes at me. No warning. No final growl. Just uncurls into action.
“Fuuuuuuuuuu…” I never make it to the end of the expletive. I turn and flee, fast as I can. I can feel the ground shaking beneath me. Can feel the thing a yard behind me. Gaining. Eating up inch after valuable inch. Just like it’ll eat me.
Save me, Clyde. Please. Take this moment I’m trying to buy you and save the crap out of me.
A noise from behind me, vast, squealing, but still that rhythm of metal paws doesn’t cease. Head down. Push on reserves of adrenaline that I’m not sure are there. A breathless ragged push to flee. To get away.
Everything around me disappears. Even the sound of the lion. Everything narrows down into the action of placing the next foot, the next one, pumping my legs that little bit harder. My whole world reduced to a single action.
And then I trip, I sprawl. Hands out, too late. I grind my chin on concrete, bite my lip, spit blood. I roll. Arse over head. Feet over
arse. Crashing down. Arms splayed. Wrist slamming down. Skid and stop.
And this is it. This is—
—I don’t die. I lie on my back, puffing, wheezing, trying to desperately suck air back into my lungs. Trying to widen my vision from the two narrow points it’s become.
I am not in Trafalgar Square any more. I am in a dull back street. All brown brick, and black, wet asphalt. Somehow in my mad dash, I have managed to fully clear the field of engagement. I must have looked like a lunatic, sprinting madly away.
Jesus, I have to get back there.
I check my gun. My hands are shaking almost uncontrollably. Too much adrenaline in the system. Too much having my life threatened by things that shouldn’t be. I am going to go back to that square and I am going to execute me some Russians. Shock and bloody awe.
“What’s Katerina’s situation?”
Who the hell? I spin around. But the street’s abandoned. No one here.
“Pardon?” The voice again, quiet and bland, barely audible. “Is she on location?”
A little voice that seems to be coming from my pocket. I reach in. What the hell do I have…?
Coleman’s phone. It’s still on, still translating.
“She’s at Big Ben now.”
Russians. Russians are talking. Near me. Audibly.
“And they’re all here?”
Russians talking about Big Ben. I was just talking about Big Ben the other day. Something to do with all this. What was it?
“The MI37 goons? They haven’t a clue.”
I spin round in the street. And there’s no one here. A couple of parked cars. An empty Fiat. An empty Ford. Some worker men’s white van.
Wait… the van. The window is rolled down. I take a step towards it. I hear a voice. Syllables I don’t fully catch.
“Ivan has given his performance?”
I look down at the phone. Take another step.
More mumbling.
“What was that?” asks the phone.
I look at it. What was what?
“Do you hear that?” asks the phone.
I waste about half a second wondering how on earth I triggered paranoia mode on Coleman’s phone before I realize I’m rumbled. The Russians know I’m here. I back up ten fast paces and flatten myself against the back of the van. My breathing is coming fast. I put the phone away, slip it into the inside pocket of my jacket. Time to concentrate on my other hand and the gun in it.
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