Kate thrust her chin out. “The family pariah.” But she didn’t sound as scornful as she had.
Jacob shrugged. “I can always use a good finder.”
“And he pays,” Alice said.
Kate looked around the circle, her expression flickering through variations of indifference, disgust and in Fiona’s case outright hatred. It wasn’t greed that motivated her though, Fiona knew that. The last person Kate looked at before speaking was Jessica.
“I’d need something of his,” Kate said.
Alice pulled the chain around her neck. Julian’s warlock ring appeared, starkly black even against her black leather jacket. “This.”
Kate raised her hand towards it.
“Careful,” Alice said with a sharp smile. “This old thing will send you flying.”
Julian placed one hand flat against the iron wall. Solid. It was good to be solid again.
An alarm klaxon wailed, an old-fashioned thing from a World War II movie. Julian’s footsteps rattled on the metal grating as he backed away from the wall.
“How did you get in here?” A man’s voice, hard, unused to being raised. Julian turned to face its owner.
Doctor Edmund Hargrave was much older than the mid-twenties he appeared. To Julian’s senses he was stained by the alchemical processes that extended his life. His white lab coat was buttoned to the neck and his black rubber boots squeaked as he moved. The revolver in his hand was an antique.
“A Blackwood,” Doctor Hargrave said, seeing the ring on his finger. He brandished the revolver. “Answer me.”
“Julian, isn’t it?” His daughter, Evelyn, approached from Julian’s side. She was no less severe than her father. She spoke as though clarifying a formula, not to reassure. “Alexander’s son.”
“Answer my question, Julian,” Doctor Hargrave said. “How did you get in here? My facility’s defences are the most secure in the world.”
When Julian spoke, his voice was frosted by the spheres beyond space-time. “Along certain curves,” he said, “from certain angles, you’re wide open.” He pointed towards the large black sarcophagus in the centre of the chamber. “I came to see that.”
“Yes,” Astra said. Her grip burned his shoulders like acid. “This is it. Show me, Julian.”
The dead presence within the sarcophagus tugged at his thoughts, plucking at the weave of them, trying to unravel the whole. Even from the edge of the chamber, it coiled into his flesh and made him shiver. He could feel his warlock ring upsetting the delicate balance of immense energies flowing into the sarcophagus, before they were directed upwards and outwards across London.
It was vastly more intense, that presence, but it was exactly like one of the two he’d discovered in the grave in Iceland.
Doctor Hargrave stepped between Julian and the sarcophagus. “Why? Why do you want to see it? Why have you gone to such trouble?”
“Yes!” She shook him. “Now I know. Thank you, Julian. You’ve given me exactly what I need.”
Her knives slid out of his mind. Julian sagged forward. He was conscious of his whole body shuddering in reaction, though he felt disconnected from it.
“You got it?” he heard Tom Calder ask.
“Just as we hoped.” Astra sounded on the verge of laughing. “The body under Trafalgar Square isn’t the one. Kill the warlock. We don’t need him any more.”
All he’d done. The secret was out anyway. It was all for nothing.
And then the room filled with white teleport light.
Chapter 25 – Fiona
When Fiona shed the teleport light, she found herself face-to-face with a squirrelly man in a silly black cloak. The man squeaked and backed into a tiny kitchen.
Fiona and her companions were dotted along a long, open-plan space. Along with the squirrelly man, a short young woman and a young man with the physique of a body-builder stared at them with open mouths. Julian was tied to a chair between kitchen and living room. Rage spiralled up inside her when she realised from his position and posture that he’d been tortured.
Alice’s rage was faster.
She flung herself at the young woman who stood over Julian, heedless of the ghost above and behind her. At the sight of that ghost, everything else flew out of Fiona’s head. She could never forget Savraith’s engraved features.
The girl over by Julian – who had to be Astra – gestured with one slim hand. Savraith’s ghost matched the gesture.
Alice froze in mid-leap.
Rob’s fury was close behind Alice’s. His clothes split as he swelled into his werewolf form. The snarl that tore from his throat sent a bolt of primal terror down Fiona’s spine. Animal instinct screamed at her to run, climb, hide.
Even as Rob changed, so did the other man in the flat. His transformation was much less impressive than Rob’s. Half a werewolf, Rob had called Tom Calder and now that she saw it, she wouldn’t put it differently.
Astra raised her right hand. The ghost mimicked her. She stretched her fingers towards Rob, then pulled and closed her hand, as though snatching his voice from the air.
Rob made a horrible gulping sound, like he was about to puke. He doubled over. On all fours, he shook and thrashed and shrank. In seconds, he was in his human shape again.
Mr Shell opened fire from beside the big flatscreen TV.
Bolts of electricity flashed from his tesla coils. They burst like firecrackers against a shimmering wall of energy that appeared in front of Astra.
“Oh dear,” Mr Shell said.
He pulled his legs and head inside his shell just in time. Astra thrust her hand out, as though to shove someone in the chest. With a great crack that sent splinters slicing through the air, Mr Shell vanished through the wall.
A heartbeat of silence reigned in the small flat, until the building creaked in protest at having Mr Shell pounded through its frame. The slanted roof above Fiona shifted, as though Mr Shell had knocked out one of several supports. She glanced at Jacob, who stood in a passageway beside the kitchen. He had not acted, but he watched Astra as though waiting for his opening.
“Well,” Astra said. “I don’t think much of your rescue attempt.”
“What’s that smell?” Fiona asked.
Julian lifted his head on a wobbling neck. He croaked, “His name was Liam.”
Rob bellowed and sprang back, landing on a couch. That was when Fiona saw the half-cooked body he’d fallen beside.
Tom Calder laughed.
“Julian here is the only one of you who stood a chance against me,” Astra said. “And I have him neutralised.”
Fiona had not smelled burnt human flesh before. She wasn’t happy about having done so. “I’m sure Liam agrees with you.”
Astra’s gaze flicked over her, from head to toe. She lingered on Fiona’s shadow, though what she saw there didn’t appear to concern her. “Rob I know. Alice too. I don’t know the little girl with the toys.”
“I’m almost eleven!” Jessica said.
“And I don’t know you,” Astra said. “Who are you?”
Fiona lifted her head towards the glowing, humming ghost at Astra’s back. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“It has no will of its own,” Astra replied, though the idea that Fiona and Savraith might know each other made her frown.
“You have some of his power,” Julian said in a trembling voice, “but none of his skill. All you’ve got is a really good sense of hearing.”
Astra cupped her hand beneath his chin and lifted his head. Fiona saw from the flickers of pain in Julian’s face that her grip must be strong. “It hasn’t done you any good.”
Alice, still caught in mid-air, tried to speak. All that came out was hissing fury.
None of his skill. The scope of Savraith’s awareness, the subtleties of his intellect, had terrified Fiona. Julian was trying to give her what she needed to get them out of this.
She looked at Savraith – opened her mystic senses and really looked. The ghost was a remnant, powerful, but lack
ing in the presence that Fiona remembered. The awareness unfroze her mind. The ghost was a puppet, his strings the shimmering cords that wrapped around Astra. Around her, through her, down to a place on the floor. To several spots of drying blood.
And then she knew.
She caught Jessica’s attention. Tried to shield her hands from Astra with her body as she curled her forefingers to her thumbs and brought both together. Jessica frowned, then took a pair of pink sunglasses from her pocket and slipped them on.
“It’s a shame you didn’t think to make use of his mind,” Fiona said. She began to pick her way around the room. “He was very clever.”
Astra twisted Julian’s head to the side hard enough to make him gasp, then let him go and stepped back. She pointed the sword at Fiona, tracking her progress. “Close friends with the wizard, were you?”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “You’d think so. I can barely move without tripping over wizards. You should meet his friends. You did know there were three wizards of Teleoch, didn’t you?” She placed her boots carefully as she stepped over Liam’s body. She recognised Julian’s gauntlet on his hand and guessed what had happened to him.
Astra’s expression had taken on some of the fierce intensity she’d seen in Rob at times. At last Fiona saw the failed werewolf. “By the time any of them come calling, I’ll be beyond them.”
“Oh yes, you’re going to – what? Eat the corpse of your great grand-monster?” Astra’s eyes darkened, the way storm clouds rolled across a clear sky. “Good grief, is that really your plan?”
“I’ve had enough of you,” Astra said. “Tom–”
“Yes, Tom.” Fiona had reached her destination. She stood between Tom and the rest of the room. His hot breath huffed down on her. She could hear a soft rumble deep in his chest, mostly because she only came up to his breastbone and she stood right in front of him. “Hello Tom.”
She thought of Dale, or possibly Rick, outside the pub in Covent Garden. She thought of Julian strapped to the chair behind her, of what Astra would have done with him once she had what she wanted.
She punched Tom in the nose.
Her fist was small and pale against his dark bulk. She caught him by surprise. He flinched, startled but not hurt. With a snarl, he raised one clawed hand and swung it at her.
The monster in her shadow caught it.
“What?” Astra said, even as she brought her free hand up. Savraith’s hand reached towards Fiona.
Jessica fired her electro-gauntlet.
Not at Astra. Not at Tom. She fired at the splash of blood on the floor.
The patch of the floor exploded into splinters. Savraith’s ghost hissed and vanished.
Alice sprang into motion again. But Astra was ready for her. She slashed sideways with Julian’s sword and Alice fell back, as though it could hurt her.
Fiona ducked as Tom swung his free arm at her. A second black arm shot up out of her shadow. The hand clamped over Tom’s face. Her monster slammed him against the ceiling, then yanked him down into her shadow.
She felt a pang of guilt. But only a small one.
Jessica fired a blast after Diggory as he scrambled into the kitchen. He shrieked and fell, limbs thrashing. Astra held Alice off with another swipe of the sword. Julian kicked down with his feet and tipped himself over onto the floor.
Fiona scrambled across to him. Julian and the chair had rolled to the side so he faced her. She reached over him and began working on the knots in the rope.
The lights went out. Jacob, still at the mouth of the passageway, raised hands crackling with electricity. But the shot curled like a thrashing snake, tore along the wall. Jacob swore.
Fiona, hunched down, kept pulling at Julian’s knots.
Alice screamed and lunged at Astra. Astra, the backs of her legs against a low cabinet, cut Alice low, across the stomach. Alice buckled forward. Hit the floor like a dead weight.
Astra raised the sword high for a killing stroke.
Rob sprang off the coffee table. His hands clamped down around Astra’s. He drove the sword into Astra’s stomach. Swept her off her feet and pinned her to the wall.
Oh I hope she can’t survive that, Fiona thought.
Rob, teeth bared, drove the sword into Astra’s torso and the wall behind, all the way to the hilt. Her feet spasmed and kicked above the floor. Photos pinned to a corkboard fluttered free as her struggles knocked them loose. She tried to pull her hands away from Rob’s grip, but her strength was already gone. Blood ran down the wall behind her and drenched the mail stacked on the cabinet.
With a low grunt, Rob yanked the sword free and tossed it aside.
“Worth the nightmares,” he said.
And then, as she slid down to sit on the cabinet, she wasn’t Astra. Fiona didn’t see what changed. The girl sitting there, her hands pressed to her bloody stomach, she looked the same. But in some way she was different.
She wasn’t the only one to see it.
“What just happened?” Jacob held his half-numb hands against his chest. He turned his head from side to side, as if to get a better view of the girl who had been Astra.
That girl lifted her hands and stared at the blood dripping from them.
“Alice?” Julian crawled towards where she huddled. “Alice, speak to me.”
Rob took a half-step towards the girl who had been Astra. When he spoke his voice was tiny. All the anger, all the hunger for violence and revenge, was gone. He sounded small and lost and horrified.
“Zoe?”
She smiled. Pushed herself to her feet. Spread her arms wide and laughed. “She’s dead! Dead! You killed her, Rob!”
“Fiona,” Jacob said, stepping back into the cover of the passageway beside the kitchen. “Fiona, back up. Now.”
Fiona hurdled the overturned chair, grabbed Jessica and put herself between her and whatever was about to happen. Her shadow swung around in front of her, deeper and darker than she’d ever seen it.
“Alice?” Julian put his arms around her and tried to lift her. “Please say something.”
“Zoe? Is that really you?” Rob asked.
Her eyes. Her eyes were different. They were green like the sea.
“It’s really me, Rob,” Zoe said. “I’m free at last. You set me free of her.”
“I don’t understand.”
Fiona raised her voice. “You’re Astra’s twin sister Zoe?”
Zoe still had what Fiona supposed was her twin sister’s blood all over her hands. She dragged her hair back from her face and smeared crimson across her cheeks and forehead.
“We were chimeric twins,” Zoe said. “Twins that never separated in the womb. We were one person until the Covenant attacked our turning ceremony. The magic of the ritual ran wild. It separated us, but only in spirit. We became two people in one skin. But that might have been all right. We might have been able to share – if either of us had been able to change. Like you, Rob.”
“I don’t really get that,” Rob said, sounding shaken to his toenails, “but okay. You’re here, right? You’re here. That’s what matters.”
With a long sigh, Alice toppled onto her side. She was curled up in a ball and her skin was a frightening grey. Julian cupped her face in his hands. “Oh hell. Oh hell. Alice, here.” He called the sword to his right hand and put his left around the blade.
But before he could cut himself, Alice snatched his hand away. “No.”
“You need–”
“No.” She put his hand against her cheek again. “I promised you I never would.”
“We’ll get her to a vampire safe-house, Julian,” Jacob said. “Quick as we can.”
Jessica tried to duck around Fiona, but she grabbed her sister’s shoulder and held her in place. Jessica squawked in protest.
“Actually,” Fiona said, “I have a question. Zoe? Nice to meet you. Do you know what your sister was up to?”
Zoe didn’t reply. But the euphoria drained from her. What took its place was hard and ugly, like the
tide pulling away to reveal a jagged reef.
“Zoe,” Fiona said, “whose side are you on?”
She moved, darting quick. She grabbed Rob by the ears with her bloody hands and pulled his face down. She crushed her lips against his.
Fiona said, “That’s not–”
Rob roared.
It was pain and fury and most of all surprise, the surprise that comes from an unexpected blow. He staggered back from Zoe and she laughed. His spine arched back, his hands grasped at the air.
His body crackled and tore and knotted as he changed.
“Rob?” Julian lurched to his feet. He threw his weight against Rob and they danced in a grotesque circle. “Rob, listen to my voice. Rob, I know you can hear me in there.”
Rob’s face twisted into that of a wolf’s. His legs snapped and bent as his knees set themselves the other way. His shoulders ripped outwards. He shrieked. Fiona clapped her hands to her ears. Tears prickled her eyes.
“Uh oh,” Jessica said. “I don’t think he’s going to stop.”
Zoe giggled and backed away.
Julian kept pushing against Rob. Trying to hold a raging werewolf back. “Rob! Come on back, Rob. I know you can do it. Follow my voice and come on – oh fuck.”
Rob was three times Julian’s weight. He lifted him off the floor easily. Still bellowing, he smashed past the coffee table, Julian held in front of him. They went through the window at the far end of the room together and fell into the night.
“No!” Alice stumbled towards the shattered window. “He’s mine! Let go of him you filthy animal!”
Fiona pointed. “Jacob, stop her!”
“Shit,” he said. He gestured. The rope that had bound Julian flew through the air and tangled around Alice’s ankles. It didn’t knot itself, but she was still weak enough for it to trip her.
Which left Fiona to face Zoe.
“Not our side then?” Fiona asked. “I ask in case you want to change your mind.”
Zoe smeared her twin sister’s blood all across her face. “Not the change I’m looking for.” She smeared blood down the front of her coat, folded her arms and drew red lines across her forearms. “I can feel it. I can feel it coming. Finally.” Her teeth were pearly white in her crimson face. “Finally, I win.”
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