“Electricity,” Tabitha says into my ear. “He explained, right?”
“Oh,” I say. “Right.”
“Q, E, bloody D then,” she says. Which is actually quite funny, but she delivers the line so aggressively I realize the humor too late to laugh.
Kayla just glowers at me. I don’t look her way for long and I certainly don’t meet her gaze.
Instead I look over to the tattoo parlor three stores away. “So this bloke, Max,” I say to Clyde, “he puts copper wire in folk too?”
“Not exactly.” Tabitha speaks directly into my ear before Clyde can even open his mouth. He doesn’t look at all put out by this, maybe seems even to expect it. “Uses metallic inks. Not as effective. Effective enough, but not as hardcore as Clyde.”
Clyde. Hardcore? The only thing I can really imagine Clyde getting hardcore about is D.H. Lawrence. Probably another imagination failure on my part. And I don’t want to comment until I work out the nature of their relationship. So instead I say, “Metallic inks. Right.”
“Yes,” Clyde says. “It’s students mostly. That’s the problem with the Bodleian being a copyright library. Just about absolutely everything is in there. Makes it hard to sort the grimoires out.”
“Every six months.” Tabitha harrumphs. “Bloody cleanup duty.” She harrumphs again. “Bloody students.”
“And this guy tattoos on the... focusing lines?” That’s probably not the term. I need a cheat sheet.
“Just follow our feckin’ lead, all right?”
It’s the first thing Kayla’s said. She walks away from us; pushes open the tattoo parlor’s door.
She still seems pissed. I probably shouldn’t have called her Progeny. Except I can’t shake the feeling that there is something profoundly off about her. And I can’t help but think of Shaw telling me that there’s no easy way to tell if someone’s infected. So Shaw might not truly know.
I’m not really sure what I can do with my suspicions. Use them to get stabbed again?
I look to Clyde, searching for a lead to follow, when I should be offering up one myself. He hoists his shoulders sheepishly and shambles off after Kayla.
I swallow my pride and follow along. Definitely need to work on my leadership skills with these guys.
The inside of the tattoo parlor is close and dark. The walls are crowded with pieces of paper tacked there, each bearing some twisting design inscribed in black ink. Skulls leer, women pout, vines creep.
The artist, a man who knows his audience at the very least, is bent over a chair. In it is a young lad, nineteen, twenty perhaps, shirtless. The artist holds a buzzing needle over his sternum, finishing a vast spiral that stretches from one nipple to the other.
The kid being tattooed defies the Oxonian stereotype of gawky and bespectacled youth. Instead he is lean and muscled in a way that has always eluded me. His skin is ruddy, and too tan to give the impression he has spent years riffling through the depths of the Bodleian Library.
He notices us first. His eyes narrow. I guess we probably don’t look like customers. The tattooist follows his gaze.
“Oh bollocks,” the tattooist says.
“Hello, Max,” Clyde says conversationally
“Third strike, you feck,” Kayla says, not so conversationally.
Clyde puts a finger to his ear. “Large funicular circle. Whole abdomen. Minor thorax involvement. Unilinear.”
The tattoo, I realize. He’s describing the tattoo.
“Cross-referencing now,” Tabitha’s voice comes back.
“I was just copying a pattern from a book,” says Max. He indicates the offending item. It’s on his tray next to his inks. I’ve heard drunken men pinned by their car airbags lie more convincingly about how the wall came out of nowhere.
That said, the book looks too new to be a tome of ancient magicks. It’s a neatly bound hardcover, with a faux-leather spine. Still has the sheen on it. Something’s not right.
“It’s just something I sketched out myself,” the student says.
Beware the painted man’s false promises. Don’t believe his lies. Q, E, bloody D, he did not sketch that himself.
“If you could just put the needle down, Max,” Clyde says, ignoring the student. “Be a decent chap.”
“Before I make you, Max.” Kayla’s Scots accent somehow makes the words even more threatening.
“This is not even close to being f—” he says, and it’s about that point that I realize that if the student is the painted man, which seems fair enough given that Max himself doesn’t have a single tattoo on him, then really we shouldn’t be worrying about him. And it’s also the point when the kid we’re ignoring legs it.
He moves like lightning. I turn trying to grab him, but his elbow whips out and slams into my gut. I collapse on it like a deflated balloon, air whining out of me.
Clyde manages to half-turn his head by the time Kayla is fully turned around, but even she is too slow. The kid grabs the notebook as he legs it, uses the momentum of his motion to catch Kayla on the back of the head. She steps to steady herself and he’s already passed her. Then the bell on the door rings and the student’s outside.
“Feck!” Kayla bellows in the small space.
I try sucking in an experimental lungful of air. It doesn’t go as well as I’d hoped.
“What’s going on?” Tabitha says into my ear. I don’t bother trying to reply.
“You,” Kayla points to Max.
“Y-y-y-yes?” Any cocky swagger he has put on, any defensive bluster melts in the face of her anger, steams up and evaporates. All that is left is fear.
Kayla steps forward, punches him. His head snaps back and his legs go out from under him. Kayla looks around at Clyde and I. “Why are you still feckin’ standing here?”
I feel that I actually have a decent excuse for this one, but I still can’t get enough breath in to explain that, and anyway, Kayla’s already out the door, and then Clyde is too, his tweed jacket flapping behind him, and I’m not sure that Max, in his unconscious state, would really appreciate the observation. So I make my wheezing way to my feet, and stagger after them. The spot where I was stabbed burns.
“What do you mean he’s running?” comes Tabitha’s voice in answer to some observation I don’t hear.
I can see Clyde a dozen yards away, hand still to his earplug. Kayla is more like a hundred. She’s moving at a terrifying pace. People on the streets leap left and right. She’s heading to a parked car. Some clapped-out old thing, rust showing through the paint. The hood has been popped.
“OK, databases gave me a hit,” Tabitha barks into my ear as I stagger forward. “Tattoo design. Mazalian spiral. South American origin. Originated circa fourteen hundred BC.”
Kayla jumps. It’s twenty yards or more to the car. She arcs through the air. There’s a grace to her. Her arm reaches back almost lazily. Except it’s as if everything has been put on fast forward, everything moved up so fast my eye can barely follow it.
“Mostly used for rejuvenation spells. Crop stuff.” Tabitha drones on.
I catch up to Clyde, wheezing, bent over. He’s standing still now. No need to catch up. Game over.
“Also altered consciousness. Sex rites. Fertility.”
The sword sweeps through the steel of the car’s hood. It rips and splays, falls away. The bare-chested student is standing there. He staggers backwards. He’s holding the car battery.
“And transmogrification. Of all things.”
“Oh bugger,” Clyde groans. Then he breaks into a run.
“Trans what?” I say. “Why are we running?”
“Battery!” Clyde is yelling. “He’s got a car battery!”
“Move it!” Tabitha’s yell is an electronic screech in my ear.
Transmogrifi-what?
I can see Kayla raising her arms. The sword doesn’t come up, though. She’s not going to strike. It’s a defensive gesture. She’s protecting her face.
There’s a magnesium-white flare, brigh
t and brilliant, like the birth of a star in the street before me. My vision goes white, then red, then black. I stumble back, grabbing at my eyes. And Jesus does that hurt.
Slowly the street comes back to me, slowly it resolves. Black, to red, to blinding white. Then blurs of shape. Focus evolving out of chaos. Into chaos. People about me are down on their hands and knees, pawing about blindly. Screaming. Cursing. I rub my eyes. The car. The detached hood. A shadow shape still standing on the car’s roof. Kayla. I see Kayla. And the student, where’s...?
Holy shit.
There’s something where the student was. Something massive. Something growing. It’s human in shape, I’ll give it that. Squat powerful legs, broad as my chest, thickening at the thigh, ropes of muscle bursting through the jeans he was wearing. Above the waist—an inverted pyramid of flesh, each abdominal muscle a chopping board of flesh, the pectorals as wide as the hood of the car Kayla just cut away, but thicker, vault door thick. And the arms... They grow longer, knuckles strike the ground. Forearms thicker than the thighs. Biceps thicker still. Shoulder muscles like a cow’s carcass dragged over the joint. He’s colossal, ten feet tall and still going. Twelve foot now.
And perched on the massive crossbar that is his shoulders is a curiously small head. Not the student’s head anymore. A second face.
His hair grows as I watch, is longer, blonder now. The cheekbones lift, the chin thins, the eyes grow larger. It’s a girl’s face, a child’s face, pretty, actually, despite the monstrosity beneath. And then it twists, contorts, one side of the skull crumples, caves in, its tongue lolls out and it sneers. It roars. It bellows, from its crushed head, and the street vibrates with the sound.
If ever there was a moment to bail, then this is it. Running and screaming are pretty much the only rational things left to do.
So I start running. Except... well, if I ever meet Kurt Russell I think I’m going to have to give him a piece of my mind, because I’m running toward the bloody thing.
8
I’m halfway to the car when the monstrosity swats Kayla like a Scottish fly.
She watches it happen. She stands there. Does nothing. Her sword dangles by her side. She stares up at the misshapen head while the fist goes back. While it comes back down.
At first I think something must be happening so fast I don’t even see it. I almost expect to see her dancing up the thing’s arm, standing astride its shoulders. But she’s flying through the air like a broken mannequin. And it doesn’t seem like part of the plan when she lands and lies there unmoving.
Our biggest gun was just taken out in under six seconds.
My pace slows. And... isn’t she...? Isn’t the plan that...? Aren’t I backup? Kayla does the whole inhuman speed and agility and stabbing things with a sword bit. And I...? I’ve never even punched a wall.
Why did she take that hit? Why would she do that?
The thing that was the student closes a massive fist on the roof of an old Ford Escort. Metal crumples. He hefts it, one-handed. Weighs it. Muscles ripple—inhuman anatomy flexing. In his spare hand, he still holds the car battery, two fingers pressed to the contacts. I wonder about that. Not for very long. Too busy wondering about the best way to dodge a flying car.
I dive left. There’s a sound like the sky cracking. Chunks of glass and metal fly. My ears pop painfully. I eat pavement, scraping to a stop, skinning my chin. I roll, breathe, come up and the street keeps rolling. The student... Where’s the student? And then there’s another car. It’s in the air, already coming at me. And it’s unfair to blame Kayla for the whole thing, but I do anyway.
Why did she take that hit?
I brace for a vehicular enema.
The car lurches sideways in midair. Something invisible slams into its side and knocks it spinning away. It crashes into the middle of Cowley Road. Rolls like a barrel. Bounces over the roof of another car. Collision glass shatters in an explosion of white shards.
Clyde stands there, hand outstretched. There’s a tear in the elbow of his jacket. He brings his second hand to bear on the student, the monster. A slow deliberate movement. He bunches his shoulders. Pulls back, curls into himself. The student takes a step toward him. The ground shakes. Clyde explodes outward, flings his arms out. A great shove into midair.
The student slams to a halt. His feet grind backwards. He stumbles, goes down on one knee. Clyde takes a step forward.
Holy crap. Clyde is the backup.
The student grunts, something animal, something guttural. He bellows. Everything vibrates. Clyde’s feet shake; he’s putting everything into the invisible shove. The student smiles. The student leers. The student stands. Clyde staggers back.
I lurch to my feet. I stare.
They come at it again. Clyde slams something massive and invisible into the massive and very definitely visible student. I see the student’s muscles quake. But he doesn’t go down. He just pushes back. They stand there. Stalemate.
I think about the two flimsy batteries in Clyde’s mouth. I think about the car battery the student is clutching. Clyde’s power level isn’t even close.
But... maybe, yes, maybe there’s the start of an idea there.
“What’s going on?” Tabitha’s voice is sudden and sharp in my ear. I shake my head. I need to concentrate.
The student needs power. That’s why his fingers are still pressed to those contacts. Electricity is power. Electricity powers the break in reality that’s causing this spell. Electricity needs a circuit. Break the connection, break the spell. We don’t have the monster to deal with, we have the man.
All I have to do is think of a way to get the big bastard to loosen his grip.
And the thing about movie cops is that they have guns. Magnum 45s and Uzis. They have biceps the size of my head. I don’t even have my steel baton so I can give him a rap on the knuckles.
The student lets out another bellow from his misshapen child’s mouth. He takes a step forward. Clyde’s sneakers skid back down the road, soles screeching. He grunts. The student takes another step.
All I’m left with is running for cover. Head down. Feet slapping against the asphalt. I half expect a Peugeot up the arse.
“Keep using Elkman’s Push.” Tabitha comes online again answering some unheard statement from Clyde. “Emphasis on the second syllable. Searching for something bigger. More oomph.”
I slam into the limited shelter of a doorway. Tabitha is whispering a stream of curses into my ear. Whatever she’s trying to look up, she’s not finding it.
From my momentary cover I look again at the student’s car battery. I look at the fist gripping it. It’s as big as my chest, fingers near the width of my forearm. I can’t get it to let go. There’s no way to prize those fingers apart.
Still, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Even a twelve-foot-tall slavering monster cat. I hope.
“Tabitha,” I say. “I need something sharp. Something with a rubber grip.” Something that won’t fry me like an egg when I jam it into that battery. “A fire axe would be nice.”
“Have fun with that. Kind of busy.”
I scan the street, the rubble. Nothing. I look over at Clyde. Doesn’t seem to have a fire axe on him.
“Come on,” I say to Tabitha. “Please.”
“Where are you?”
“Cowley.”
“I fucking know Cowley. Where on Cowley?”
Adrenaline is screwing with my ability to keep up with conversation. I look left, then right. There’s not much to go on. “Opposite an Indian restaurant,” I say.
Nothing. No reply. Clyde is in full retreat now. The student is grinning, mashing his way down the street.
“Turn around,” Tabitha says.
“What?” I was rather hoping to keep my eyes on the terrifying, death-dealing monster stalking down the street.
“Turn around,” Tabitha repeats. “Pretty simple.”
I hesitate, and then I turn.
I’m looking into a hardware store. I’m
standing in the doorway of a hardware store.
Talk about staring you in the bloody face.
I kick in the glass of the door. Which jars my leg in an uncomfortable way but still looks sort of awesome. Then I go and spoil the effect by trying to avoid slicing myself open on the remaining jags of glass as I edge through. The lights of the place have gone out. I can see people cowering in the aisles, heads down. Someone standing behind the counter furiously rubbing his eyes. Axes. Axes. Which aisle for axes?
I can feel time running out. I can feel Clyde’s batteries running out. I hear a yell from the street and see him flying backwards, sailing through the air. Time’s up.
No axe.
Then I realize I’m staring at crowbars. Crowbars with easy-to-grip rubber handles.
I grab one, turn, feet skidding. Adrenaline flushes my system and this suddenly feels like it might even be a good idea. I start running. My feet pounding down. I smash through the remaining shards of the door. I hit the street sprinting. My legs burn. A good burn. The burn of fire. Of power. The world is slipping past me in slow motion. It’s like a dream. The student is hefting another car. But I’m going wide, and he doesn’t see me. He looses the car at Clyde. I don’t have time to look. I’m coming up parallel with it. I’ve got the crowbar lifted like a javelin. The student looks left for another projectile. I’m coming up on its right.
I jump. Right foot on the hood of a car. The twang of steel beneath the impact of my foot. The thing starts to turn. My left foot hits the roof of the car. Smack. And then I’m in the air, crowbar lifted above my head. A steel snake about to strike.
The student swats me. Dismissed by the back of his hand.
I am vaguely aware of pain. I am vaguely aware of my vision jagging abruptly sideways before it blurs. I am even vaguely aware of the pavement as it robs me of my senses.
9
THEN AND WHEN AND IN-BETWEEN
An alleyway. Dirt-strewn. Trash-spattered. And I think I must have fallen down, must have landed badly, because everything hurts. My chest hurts. Jesus, it feels like I’m splitting in two, starting right there, right between my ribs. And how did I get here?
No Hero Page 7