“Okay, okay!” a man’s voice. He must have walked into something solid because he swore.
He stood in front of the warehouse, its thin light tracing him in silhouette.
“Is that you, Bronte?”
Terence!
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ll tell you if you put that gun down.”
I did as he asked. The gun felt suddenly very heavy.
“Can you see my bag? I dropped it on the floor,” I asked.
I was going to have to get a new bag.
“I can’t see anything.”
Twisting back towards the light I checked that the safety was on and then stuffed the gun down the back of my jeans. It felt very bulky back there.
“You’ll have to bear with me,” I said. “I’ve had a hell of a day.”
He made to move towards me but I held up a hand.
“Look,” I said. “I’d prefer it if you just stood over there for a bit.”
I must have sounded like I meant it because he stayed where he was. At last, I was starting to get streetwise.
“Now, you were telling me what you were doing here.”
“Same as you, I suppose. I was starting to wonder why Brodsky would choose to come back here after The Coven tried to kill him.”
I scowled at him. “What makes you think it was The Coven?”
“Well, whoever it was must have scared him pretty badly. Why come back here and risk getting caught?”
“If he was going to disappear he’d need money. He was bound to have a cash box somewhere. But I see what you’re getting at: you think maybe he stashed the Iron here.”
And then another voice – an unmistakeable voice - behind me.
“Well, this is all very cosy.”
I spun around just as Silas stepped into the light. He seemed distracted by something. He must have been out in the rain all this time: his thick hair was starting to curl.
He pointed at Terence. “Who’s this?”
I took a moment to collect myself from the shock. “This is Terence, from work.”
“Is he the one with the bolt-cutters?”
I was confused. “Bolt-cutters?”
“I didn’t want to go through the gallery,” Terence sounded defensive. “There’s bound to be alarms. I thought that this was the easiest way in. Through the back gate.”
“What were you looking for?” Silas indicated. “In the warehouse?”
“He’s looking for the Iron.”
“Well, he won’t find it there,” Silas came and stood beside me. “Do you trust him?”
I hesitated. Really, I didn’t but, then again, I‘d witnessed how casually Silas dealt with people he considered to be a threat.
“He’s okay,” I said.
Silas looked from me, to Terence and back again. He gave me a sour look. “I’m not convinced. Keep that gun of yours handy. If he tries anything: shoot him.”
He switched on a powerful torch and tossed it across to Terence who nearly dropped it. Then Silas started shrugging off his leather rain-coat which he pressed on me. The leather was fig-soft.
“Italian,” I asked.
“Only the best.”
He disappeared out of the light for a moment and when he came back he was carrying one of those creeper boards that mechanics use to get under cars, along with a set of tools.
“What was it that you wanted to show me,” I asked.
“That this place had been broken into.”
“Was that all?”
“Thought it might be a trap.”
“But you were quite happy to let me walk into it.”
“To be honest,” he was smiling. “I thought you’d have had more sense.”
I was about to argue the point until I realised the truth of what he was saying. I really needed to be more careful. I was going to get myself killed if I didn’t start exercising a little more caution. Then something else occurred to me.
“Heay, Terence, have you heard from Marcus?”
“No. I thought I’d follow this up myself. Didn’t want to waste his time.”
Before I could say anything else Silas had peeled off his cashmere sweater to reveal his heavily muscled upper body. I took the sweater without a word.
He lay back on the creeper board and pushed himself under the car.
“I need some light!”
Terence squatted down and swept the beam under the vehicle.
“Not in my eyes!”
Terence angled the beam upwards.
“I thought they’d searched the car,” I said.
“They’ve searched inside the car.” I was conversing with Silas’s legs. “But they haven’t searched under the car.”
“What makes you think it’s under the car?”
Silas wiggled further forward.
“Brodsky didn’t start off as an art dealer. He started off as a smuggler. People initially. It was only later that he realised he could make more money moving stolen artworks across Europe.”
“You’re not telling me that everything in that gallery is stolen.”
“Pass me the big spanner,” he said.
He took it from me before continuing. “The business is legitimate but that’s not where the real money is. He’s still a smuggler at heart. I got to thinking that it wouldn’t be that difficult to have his vehicle modified so that he could carry stuff across checkpoints. Looks like I was right.”
“Heay,” Terence exclaimed. “What’s that?”
“Look what we’ve got here. Keep that light still.”
The seconds ticked slowly by.
Terence said, “There’s a slit in the side. I can’t be sure but it looks like we might have struck gold.”
Terence straightened up, I thought initially that he wanted me to take a look at what they’d found. But, when I went to take the torch he shone it directly into my eyes.
The rest was over before I realised what was happening.
Dazzled by the light, I didn’t put up much resistance when he snatched the gun from my waistband.
There were two clicks and then a single gun-shot.
Chapter 21
Silas screamed, his legs thrashing.
“Oh, my God, Terence! What are you doing?”
Now he was levelling the gun at me.
“Pull him out,” he said his voice flat and hard.
It didn’t occur to me what he meant at first. I just stared at the gun in disbelief.
Eventually I did bend down and grab Silas by the ankles but he cried out. His right trouser leg was black with blood and there was a strong smell of cordite. I took Silas’ left leg and eased him out from underneath.
He had a gash in his head where he must have banged it when he’d been shot. He was in an awful lot of pain, grabbing his thigh with both hands.
“You little bastard!” I turned on Terence and was shocked by the coolly assessing glint in his eye. The transformation was minimal yet total.
He waved the gun at me.
“Put him in the car.”
He produced a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the car.
“At least give me a hand.”
“If you can’t do it I’ll just have to finish the job.”
In his current state Silas was little more than dead weight but, by grabbing under his arms I was able to move him closer to the car. When I opened the rear door Silas appeared to grasp what was required of him. He pulled with one arm while I lifted his hips. It must have been incredibly painful for him but, bit by bit, we were able to lever him onto the back seat.
I slammed the door shut and moved around to the passenger door.
“I don’t think so,” Terence’s voice sounded totally different.
Smoother, more confident. “You’re driving.”
I looked him full in the face. “I can’t drive.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m a single girl living in London. Of course I don’t drive.”
*
Terence drove. He wasn’t pleased about it.
He drove with his left hand, holding the gun across his body with his right.
When he changed gears he had to take his hand completely off the steering wheel. He didn’t change gears unless he had to.
The car was thick with the smell of blood but it was too dark in the back for me to see how bad the wound was.
“You have to take him to a hospital.”
Terence snorted, “He’s still coming with us.”
I wanted to scream but I contained myself. “He’s bleeding to death. Why’d you have to shoot him?”
“To slow him down. You don’t need to worry though. He’s a shapeshifter, he’ll be alright.”
“And how would you know?”
He looked across at me and smiled.
“Because I’m a shapeshifter too.”
*
For a while I couldn’t speak, I just let that information sink in.
If he was telling the truth then that changed everything.
“You had us all fooled, then.”
“And here’s me: doesn’t know the first thing about being a wizard.”
I blinked and sat up straight. How could he have tricked us so completely?
“You threw that fireball back at the hospital. We all saw the after-effects.”
Terence had taken the gun in his left hand now, driving with his right. His aim was less confident and kept veering off as he drove.
“If you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one. It was me who suggested to Marcus about the pair of us splitting up to guard the two stair-wells.”
“Which gave you the chance to transform before you stormed the hospital ward.” It was all starting to make sense. “So that was you. But then, what does that make you? Certainly not a werewolf.”
“Snow leopard. It’s a long story.”
“And Anja. What was she?”
He wiped the corners of his mouth with all the fastidiousness of a big cat.
“She was the innocent one in all of this. She went to the hospital because she’d heard Brodsky had been stabbed. When she realised he’d been killed she was desperate to speak with Helena. Wanted to find out what happened.”
I put my hand to my own mouth. All I could think about was her son.
“So why did you kill her?”
Terence didn’t reply. The muscles in his jaw tensing.
He was forced to stop at a set of traffic lights. Used it as an excuse to switch the gun back to his right hand.
“She happened across me on the stairs as I was turning back. I’d been shot.”
“The police?”
“Not the police: you. You with your stupid silver bullets,” he jabbed the gun at my face making me flinch. “Ripped up my shoulder pretty badly and then got me in my side. Did a lot of damage.”
The lights changed and we moved off.
“And Anja? The fireball?”
“She’d seen too much. I waited until she was off her guard and then…”
He twisted his head violently to one side making a chirping sound.
“Stripped her. Dumped her clothes in one of the bins.”
“But not before you set fire to her. I saw the photo.”
“I’d brought along a can of lighter fuel just in case. I’m not proud of myself but it had to be done.”
He was leaning forward, both arms draped over the wheel, no thought now as to how he held the gun.
I didn’t realise at first that he was actually crying but I had no sympathy for him. All I could think of was her little boy growing up without a mother.
*
We were driving through a particularly exclusive part of the capital. Each of the properties had their own separate drive way but most had invested in some serious fencing in order, I assumed, to protect the owners from prying eyes.
I was more concerned about Silas. He’d stopped moving and his legs had splayed out across the back seat suggesting that he was slipping into unconsciousness. Things were starting to get desperate. I didn’t care how tough Silas was, Terence had shot him with a silver bullet and if we didn’t get it out of him soon it would kill him.
Just then, Terence slowed the car and pulled it into a driveway. We couldn’t see much of the house as our view of it was blocked by a bank of cypress trees.
Terence squinted through the windscreen. “This place belongs to a mutual friend of ours: Nils Lindqvist. Remember him?”
Had I under-estimated Lindqvist’s part in all of this? How big a player he had been before he’d been double crossed by Brodsky? He was, after all, the one who’d acquired the Iron in the first place.
It was very dark in the grounds, the trees throwing everything into shadow. When the house finally came into view I saw that it was Victorian brick, built in the Gothic style, with ivy sprouting beneath the first floor windows. The building appeared top heavy, the roof being made up of heavy slate giving the impression of an up-turned boat stranded on dry land.
The car crunched over the gravel as we approached the turning circle directly in front of the main house. The place might have been deserted were it not for a light in one of the upstairs bedrooms which cast a glow over the three cars parked out front. They were all sombre, reliable, high-end vehicles.
A dark archway off to our right suggested access to a side garden and Terence chose to pull up in front of this. As soon as we had stopped a man appeared from the shadows of the archway taking me totally by surprise.
Terence got out of the car and the pair of them had a brief conversation before the man disappeared back the way he’d come.
Terence then came around to my side of the car and opened the door.
“Come on,” he sounded excited. “We don’t want to keep them waiting.”
“What happened to your accent?”
He’d completely lost the stilted clumsiness of the foreign exchange student, his voice now clear and confident. In fact, he would have fitted in seamlessly into most English public schools.
“All part of the illusion I’m afraid. I’m glad to be rid of it, I was starting to feel like a complete idiot.”
“I think I’m the only idiot round here. What are we going to do about Silas?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting somebody to come out to him.”
“He needs a doctor.”
“He’ll be well looked after. You have my word.”
He got out of the car and came around and opened my door for me. It felt creepy, Terence trying to be all suave. I preferred him the way he was before; not that that person had ever really existed.
*
We went in through the archway which lead to a small court-yard and then right into the kitchen. Terence stood a little way back, instructing me which way to go. He wasn’t even bothering to keep me covered with the gun. The light in the kitchen was dazzling after what we’d been used to. Terence appeared very relaxed, dressed as he was in a sports jacket and purple polo neck but I couldn’t forget that I was in the presence of a cold blooded killer.
Perhaps I should have been thinking about how I was going to escape although, I have to admit, curiosity had gotten the better of me. I just had to know what was going on inside that house.
The ground floor had a clammy chill all of its own - all the rooms were closed off. We entered a white hallway whose chandelier twinkled mischievously suggesting that this was a place of privilege and that we should be mindful of our hosts. Although I could hear the sounds of movement from around the house there was still no sign of a living person.
“Up the stairs,” he said and I complied. There was a formal staircase leading up from the main reception area replete with its own wrought iron hand-rail. It instantly reminded me of my dad. When the pair of us finally returned from our Russian adventure we’d had to find somewhere to live. My dad wanted to move us into some sorry pile full of this kind of period detail but in the end we’d settled on a suburban semi-detached.
Standing at the top of the stairs I could see a set of double doors straight ahead. One of the doors was partially open and it sounded like there was some kind of cocktail party going on inside. A man servant helped me off with my coat making me feel self-conscious about my appearance and, specifically, the state of my hair. Terence kept his jacket but passed the man my gun. The man took it between finger and thumb carrying it away as though it were a wet umbrella. Terence indicated for me to enter the room.
“What about Silas?”
“He’s being tended to right this minute.”
A party was in full swing. Against the far wall a long table was drawn up against an open fire. The table was draped in white linen and on it were arrayed silver platters sporting a wide range of hors d’oeuvres. On the outside wall between two sets of velvet curtains was a low drinks table which twinkled with crystal.
Although I didn’t recognise anyone specifically I recognised the type. You see groups of them in London all the time: monied background, job in the city, seamlessly combining their networking with their socialising. They were slightly older than the average crowd though and that flirtatious element which often defined such groups was oddly missing even though there was an equal number of men and women. The fact that they hardly spared us a glance when we stepped into their little soiree suggested that they were a steadfastly self-contained unit. Whatever needed to be done, they were more than capable of accomplishing it, we’d just caught them at a moment of quiet introspection. Everyone appeared to have a glass in their hand but no-one seemed to be drinking.
I was at a loss to explain the social dynamic and the fact that Terence looked just as out of place in their company as I did made me doubly anxious. I was pretty sure that they recognised him and yet no one came forward to greet him, his presence was tolerated in a similar manner to the waitress serving them. These were serious people. Seriously bad people if I didn’t miss my guess.
Lacking a glass himself, Terence didn’t know what to do with his hands. Without the threat of the gun he seemed diminished. Finally, he stopped a passing waiter and took two glasses of champagne. He handed one to me.
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