Astra walked out the door and down the steps. She straightened her scarf and buttoned her coat up while the flames waved at her from the upper floor windows.
The ghost vanished. Crispin and the circle had withdrawn it. No doubt they were exhausted, but they had done well. Astra felt the power run out of her and sighed to feel so mundane again.
Tom had followed her suggestion and moved the car to the gate. She took her heels off and carried them in one hand as she walked back down the driveway. The ground was pleasantly chilly against her stockinged feet.
An explosion sounded behind her as she neared the car. She turned to see. The roof caved in at one end of the house and green flames shot out of the gap. Another explosion, also green. It left a long afterimage in the dark sky.
Tom stood beside the car, watching the mansion burn. He didn’t bother offering her the cover of an umbrella – that had just been for show. Astra opened the passenger-side front door and tossed her heels inside.
“What do you think?” she asked.
His rugged, square face broke in a grin. “Can we go again?”
Astra laughed. “Soon enough. Soon enough they’ll all obey – or they’ll burn.”
Chapter 2 – Rob and Julian
Rob clung with one hand to a handrail and tried not to kill everyone on the train.
It wasn’t even the full moon. That was five days away – he shouldn’t be in any danger. But he’d had another one of those damned nightmares again last night, the ones Julian said should have ended weeks ago.
The train was packed with morning commuters. Because of some minor hiccup on the Piccadilly Line up towards Heathrow, they were shoulder to shoulder. Piccadilly Line trains were not designed for people over six feet in height so Rob had to stand hunched and fight the need to punch the ceiling. The carriage swayed to the left and a shoulder dug into Rob’s back. The train straightened and the girl in front of him, reading a book and unable to reach anything to hold onto, pressed against him. The scent of her hair filled his nose.
All their scents filled his nose. Their warm, human scents, getting warmer and stuffier as the train rolled towards central London. They sweated in their winter coats, breathed their nicotine breaths and sniffed their cold-bedevilled noses.
He wanted to burst out of his own skin and tear into them. It would be easy. He was so strong and they were so frail.
The train slowed – not to stop, but because they were passing through a station where it didn’t stop. Rob’s gaze fastened onto Chiswick Park station as it spooled by. He fought the urge to tear his way through the metal and plastic of the carriage wall and leap out onto the platform. He was sure he could do it.
He glanced at Julian beside him. Julian had been caught with his left arm partly raised as they were packed onto the train and, having no way to lower it and nothing better to do, he was tapping a beat on his collar-bone with his thumb. Rob felt like he should be able to recognise the tune, but his brain was too busy snapping at its own tail.
Julian was also studying Rob’s fingers. Rob followed his gaze. They were plain, human fingers, with plain human fingernails and that reassured him. Because they tingled like they did right before the full moon rose. If Rob relaxed his grip on himself a millimetre, they would turn into claws.
That damned nightmare. Julian’s stupid sword and that damned stupid nightmare.
Three weeks ago, to save his own life, Rob had picked up a sword and used it to cut a vampire in half. He hadn’t known it was Julian’s but that wouldn’t have helped him much, because Julian had never told him that anyone who touched his sword would have nightmares.
“It’s cursed?” Rob had asked. “You cursed your sword?”
Julian had shaken his head. “Its last owner was an utter bastard.”
“Righto.” He’d left it there, just in case further answers proved to be more nightmare fuel. It could be like that with Julian.
The train took a bend towards Turnham Green. Rob’s weight shifted backwards and the shoulder dug into his back again. His arm quivered as he tried to hold himself off the person behind him.
There were two more stations to go through before the train reached their stop. Two more stations worth of long, droning minutes. Two more stations of the bloke to his right who had coffee breath like he gargled the stuff.
A phone rang, its ring tone a jaunty sample of pop music. Rob bared his teeth and hoped, for the sake of everyone whose inadequate deodorant he had to inhale, that they didn’t–
“Hello?”
Rob rolled horrified eyes towards Julian.
“No, I’m stuck on a train. There was a signalling failure up near Boston Manor or something like that.”
Rob twisted his head, trying to see the speaker. He had the vague notion of smacking one of his own teeth out and spitting it at them.
“Uhhhhhhhhhmmmmmm I think that’s on the network. Have you got your K drive open? Yeah, can you see a December projects folder? No, December. December.”
Rob checked the slice of outside visible to him though a partially-steamed window. Stamford Brook station rolled by, in no great rush. People stood on the platform with cups of coffee in their gloved hands, waiting for the next District Line train to stop. Rob wondered if he could will himself to switch places with one of them through utter desperation.
“No, December this year.”
Rob bit his lip and concentrated as hard as he could on not drawing blood. Lack of decent sleep had left his mind ragged. The black rage inside him climbed further out of its hole. He realised he wasn’t going to be able to hold it. Not all the way to Hammersmith Station. He was going to lose it right there in the carriage and kill everyone.
“Yes it is. Have you got the right version? You can’t open it unless you’ve got the latest version. Ask – Hello? Hello?”
The voice from further down the carriage dwindled into swearing and then fell silent. Rob whimpered in relief and glanced at Julian.
Julian smiled, just a little.
Rob suppressed a jittery laugh. Julian had knocked the phone out. He could survive another second. Maybe even two.
Then he recognised the beat Julian was tapping on his collar bone. Thump-THUMP … thump-THUMP … thump-THUMP. A heartbeat. A slow, calm heartbeat.
Rob fixed his gaze on that simple little motion. He let the sound of it push out everything else in the carriage. He imagined his own thundering pulse slowing to the same speed.
Ravenscourt Park station went by. The train decelerated for the final slope into Hammersmith. Rob didn’t notice. He listened to the beat Julian drummed on his collar.
“The next station is Hammersmith. Change for the Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines.”
Rob blinked back to the moment. The train braked as it came alongside the platform and everyone rocked forward, like saplings in a high wind. Rob caught a nose-full of hair from the girl with the book.
The doors clunked and slid open. Cold fresh air washed across Rob’s senses. He shouldered his way across the tide of people heading for the stairs and planted himself hard against the wall. It smelled of old paint and dust. Behind him, his fellow office workers rushed off to their jobs. He pressed his forehead against the wall and breathed in scents that the monster in him didn’t immediately associate with prey.
When the crowd had moved on and the train had pulled away, he heard Julian speak from behind him.
“You with us, Rob?”
He tried to say “Yeah” but all that came out was a snarl. He pressed his hands against the brick wall until his fingers stopped tingling. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m with you.”
“You could have called in sick.”
“I’ve never called in sick for this. I’m never letting this damned thing keep me from having a life. I’ll lock myself up at night on the full moon but that’s it. The rest of the time I get to do what I want.”
Julian leaned against the wall beside him. “Take your time.”
Rob rolled around and set his
shoulder-blades against the wall too. “You said these damned nightmares would stop by now.”
“I said they should have.” Julian’s expression contained contrition but not pity. Rob was always glad for that. “But you’re the first person besides me who’s held my sword since it came into my possession. It was a best guess.”
Another Piccadilly Line train pulled into the station. The door slid open and another crowd of commuters pushed past those waiting to get on. Rob stayed against the wall as the rush of sullen people in black coats went by, then pushed himself upright and followed them. Julian fell in beside him.
“Just remember the new house rule,” Rob said, for about the hundredth time in the last three weeks.
Julian spoke in a singsong voice. “If I get any new toys that will do horrible magic things to you for touching them, I’ll warn you.” He adjusted the strap of the satchel that hung over his shoulder. “Not that it would have made a difference. You had to use it anyway.”
“At least I’d have had time to, I don’t know, gird my loins.”
Julian shot him a puzzled look. “What?”
“It was a line in some sitcom on the telly the other night at three in the morning when I couldn’t bloody sleep for nightmares.” They reached the end of the platform and started up the stairs. Along with everyone else, they moved at the pace of a couple up ahead lugging suitcases at their sides. “It’s like what cricketers do, isn’t it? You know, they put a plastic cup thing around their balls.”
“I think the expression is meant to be taken less literally than that.” They followed the crowd along the wide corridor that ran over the tracks and to the ticket gates. “Besides, you’d still have nightmares if you wore a box to bed.”
“I don’t know how it would stay on. I wear boxers.”
Out on the street, Rob took deep breaths of December air while they waited for the lights of a pedestrian crossing. Rob reached up his right sleeve and adjusted a thin iron chain he wore around his wrist. The chain dulled his senses and usually made it easier for him to get by day-to-day. But with the problem in his head much worse than usual, it wasn’t having as much effect.
A few people scooted across the pedestrian crossing before the lights changed, through a small gap in the traffic. The gap wasn’t wide enough for them to make it all the way across and angry drivers had to hit the brakes. If one of the pedestrians got themselves turned into roadkill, Rob wondered how he’d react to the sight of all that red flesh.
“We got time for a coffee?” Rob asked. The lights changed and the two crowds of waiting pedestrians surged at each other like charging infantry. Rob tried to walk with his usual confident swagger, which had the effect of making other people get out of his way – everyone but small children and people who stared at their phones while they walked, anyway. But he didn’t have any swagger left and he had to thread his way through in a series of awkward near-collisions. He winced at the idea of touching someone.
“I thought you were detoxing,” Julian said. “After all the coffee you drank that first week to try and stay awake, you said you were keeping clean for the rest of the month. As I recall, you were unable to blink for two entire days.”
“Yeah, but if the nightmares are back I need coffee.” He nodded further down the street. “The queue’s not bad at our regular.”
The coffee stall was staffed by three Polish girls, two of whom never smiled no matter how much charm Rob turned on. Rob toyed with his wrist chain while he queued and tried to ignore the faint scent of baby vomit lingering on the suit shoulder of the man in front. After a minute, he started knuckling his nose.
Julian was behind him. “Rob, should we–?”
He opened his mouth without unclenching his teeth. “I want a coffee.”
The smell of coffee beans was thick in his nose. The whistle of the coffee-maker stabbed him in the ears each time it sounded. The voices of the girls and their customers, became other sounds, prey sounds, not voices. But he got his coffee from one of the unsmiling Polish girls without tearing the counter apart with his bare hands.
Rob gulped his coffee down as they continued along King Street with the endless stream of commuters. He didn’t care that the coffee burned his tongue. His supernatural metabolism would heal that in an hour. He just wanted some bloody coffee so he could feel like a human being again.
“Stairs,” Rob said as they walked into the foyer of the building where they worked. He veered towards the stairs without waiting for Julian’s reply.
“Yes, I think we’ve had enough of pressing you into confined spaces with other people for the morning.”
Rob took one step, then he started taking them three at a time. A big rush of adrenalin hit him and he couldn’t stop himself, he had to run run run. He bounded up the stairs, pulse rising, breath coming quick and fast. He revelled in the feeling of release. He caught each bannister as he came to the landings and swung himself around to the next staircase. When he reached the third landing, he sprang off the top step and cleared the entire landing.
He got so lost in the thrill of it that he didn’t count floors. It wasn’t until he got to the top that he realised.
Rob came to a halt on the seventh floor landing. He stood there, his breath not much faster than usual, embarrassment heating his cheeks. He cleared his throat, adjusted his coat and trotted back down the stairs at a more discreet pace.
Julian stood waiting on the third floor landing. “Anything interesting up there?”
“Oh yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. The seventh floor is a nightclub, not a marketing research company like we always thought. Looks like last night’s party hasn’t stopped yet.”
Julian nodded, as though not surprised. “Shall we skip this whole work nonsense and head on up there then?”
“Nah, the music is rubbish.”
“I defer to your Manchester tastes.”
Rob pushed open the landing door. “Stick with me and I’ll teach you everything I learned about music at high school when I should have been paying attention to my teachers.”
Rob and Julian strolled past the elevators and into the foyer of Odd’s Transport. Justine, at the reception desk, nodded to them as they passed. Rob tried to give her one of his usual winning smiles but he was still too frazzled to offer more than a limp imitation. Justine was their gatekeeper and had a stare like that of a sphinx. Rob always had the feeling she could tell if he’d been up to mischief the night before.
“Safety,” Rob muttered as they reached his cubicle. The space was not large, but it was familiar and he would be alone in it. He could hunker down and ride the day out.
“Still inventing your own start times I see, gentlemen.”
Rob’s hackles rose. He tried to smooth the snarl from his face as he turned to face his newest enemy.
Herbert Tapwell was so short and stood so close that he might have been trying to fit himself in beneath Rob’s chin. He smelled of porridge and a powdered deodorant that tickled Rob’s nose. When Herbert attempted to assume the mantle of authority, he had the unfortunate habit of bulging his eyes out. Between that and the way perspective hid his chin, to Rob he looked like one of those tiny loud dogs too stupid to realise it shouldn’t attack Rottweilers.
He was Rob’s new line manager.
“Some problems on the Piccadilly Line slowed us down,” Julian said.
“And yet I see you gentlemen found time to stop for coffee.”
Julian floundered. That was usually Rob’s prompt to find the right thing to say to smooth things over. Instead, he bent closer to Herbert and growled through grinding teeth. “That’s right.”
“And yet everyone else in the department is on time,” Herbert said. “Everyone else shows the commitment to the team and to their clients that makes Odd’s Transport special. I wonder, gentlemen, if you genuinely care about the burden you place upon your workmates.”
“It wasn’t our fault,” Julian said.
Herbert swivelled on the heels of his
brown loafers. He stood with his hands draped behind his back and with his body angled so far forward Rob couldn’t believe there weren’t hidden wires attached to the back of his belt.
“The London Underground takes millions of London workers to their places of employment each day, Mr Blackwood. It does so admirably. But such a proud and ancient system cannot function perfectly at all times. Hiccups in service are to be expected. You must ensure you leave your place of residence early enough to account for such unfortunate disruptions.”
Rob’s hands crept up from his sides, fingers splayed and curved. His fingertips were tingling again.
Julian’s gaze flicked between Rob and Herbert. “Uh, yes, I think that makes perfect sense.”
Herbert rotated to face Rob. At the last second, Rob closed his hands into fists and pulled them against his chest.
“And you, Mr Cromwell? Do you agree with your confederate?”
He tried to force his lips and tongue to shape human words. “Yrrrrrssss.”
Herbert sighed and shook his head, as though he had never been so deeply disappointed. “This tardiness must stop, gentlemen. I will let you off this last time with a warning, but if you are unable to take your responsibilities to your workmates and Odd’s Transport seriously, I will be forced to begin disciplinary proceedings against you both.”
“We understand,” Julian said.
“Very good. To work then, gentlemen.” He trotted away down the line of cubicles.
Rob slumped into his chair and groaned. “Are you sure he’s not a vampire? We really can’t kill him? What’s he got on Argyle that he landed this job?”
Julian unbuttoned his coat. “There’s nothing inhuman about him. He must be just a dabbler, though I haven’t seen any evidence of that either.” He turned his attention to Rob and Rob saw the way his gaze took in hands, ears and eyes for the early signs of a shapeshifter losing his cool. “Will you be all right?”
“Yeah, I’ll make it. I think I’ll spend the morning answering forgotten password queries. That’s always a laugh.”
Immortal Make Page 2