Fiona backed away from Zoe, pushing Jessica as she went. Zoe stretched up on tiptoe. Her head tilted back.
She screamed.
Just as Rob had, she erupted out of her clothes. Her coat, her trousers, her shoes – they ruptured at the seams with a series of ripping sounds. Her skin sprouted fur, pale like desert sand. Her hands became heavy paws, claws extended. Her screaming mouth widened and her teeth enlarged. She grew taller until she towered over Fiona. She would have been as tall as Rob too, had he been there. The room was too small for her.
Zoe rocked forward, lowered on her haunches, one fore-paw touching the ground. Her chest rose and fell as she caught her breath. She lifted one arm and stared at it with golden eyes.
“She’s a big cat?” Jessica said, her head under Fiona’s arm.
Fiona held her firmly. “She’s a lion.”
Zoe laughed. The sound turned into a roar. With a single leap she had crossed the room. More glass shattered as she sprang through the window, expanding the hole Rob and Julian had made.
She vanished into the London night.
Chapter 26 – Shifts
Surrounded by the riveted iron of the Trafalgar facility’s control room, deep beneath the city, Evelyn Hargrave made her first call since arriving to lock the facility down.
“I’m seeing police chatter about an incident in Hackney,” Evelyn said. She had changed into her white lab coat and rubber-soled shoes. “A giant lion on the loose?”
“And what we think is a tussle between a warlock and a werewolf,” said Niall Creighton. He was a high-ranking member of the Shield Foundation. Once a potent psychic, for years he had relied on an alchemical compound invented by Evelyn’s father to prop up his fading abilities. “Our best guess, anyway.”
“What are your people reporting from the scene?” Evelyn asked.
She heard a rustle, as though Niall were shifting in his seat. “We don’t have anyone on the scene.”
Evelyn placed her fingertips against the communications console in her control room, hunched closer to the conference phone bolted in amongst the other equipment. “Why not? That sounds like exactly the sort of thing your Foundation exists to clean up.”
Niall breathed out heavily through his nose. She recalled he had a big red bulb of a nose from years of hard drinking. “Director Sacker has pulled everyone in. No field operations. We’re battening down the hatches, Evelyn. Preparing for the worst.”
“Then no one is watching the streets of the capital?”
He grew defensive. “What do you expect? The monsters are preparing for war. Tomorrow night they’ll be killing each other on the rooftops.”
“And your director is happy to let them do so, to thin the ranks,” Evelyn said. “That isn’t why your organisation was given its charter, Niall.”
He raised his voice at her. “Right now, thanks to that stupid Blackwood boy, our charter is as useful as old newspaper! I have to go, Evelyn.”
He closed the connection. At least modern phones made it impossible to end a call with a slam. Evelyn had always hated that.
She tried Julian’s number again. It went straight to voicemail. Rob’s phone rang for longer, which she suspected meant he’d transformed and lost it. Werewolves so often did.
The control room had a stool, but it was across the room and Evelyn felt no desire to sit. She let her gaze run across the status indicators. The facility was as secure as it could be made. Nothing but a wizard could tear through. Except perhaps the ghost of one.
Her gaze fell at last on the black sarcophagus. The presence of the dead immortal within brushed against her cheeks. Her nerves were numb from decades of flesh-weaving, but she could still feel the thing in the sarcophagus.
What would Father have done? Ever the pragmatist, her father. Anyone who could help secure the facility and maintain the spell lock on the plagues of London was an ally, no matter their history.
Shaking her head, she dialled Jacob Mandellan’s number.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Were you in Hackney ninety minutes ago?” Her equipment had begun a trace on his phone.
“May have been. Why do you ask?”
“What did they get out of Julian?”
She could hear background noises. The hum of a car, the rush of passing vehicles. “Evelyn, tut-tut. Don’t you even want to know if he’s alive?”
“There are more important questions. Answer mine.”
“Sorry, been busy dropping Alice off at a safe house. Why don’t you call him yourself?”
She hung up on him.
Evelyn paced. Julian wasn’t dead. She dared not leave the facility to try and find him. If he would just pick up her call, she could find out whether or not she needed to remain on high alert.
Trajan Blackwood called her fifteen minutes later. “What do you know?” she asked without saying hello.
“Our finder is here,” Trajan answered. The smooth obsidian of his voice was cracked with pressure. “Julian has returned to Ealing. We can’t get through to him though. Are you aware of the disturbance in Hackney?”
“The Shield Foundation is letting it be,” Evelyn said. “Whatever this giant lion is, it’s free to roam the city. If it’s Astra Kallis, she could be coming right at me.”
“Or the B site,” Trajan said. “Has there been any activity there?”
Evelyn glanced across the room at another control panel. “No. Nothing has happened in the Royal Cartographer base for decades. The vault we built beneath it is secure. What about Crispin Chalk? Julian and Rob thought he was Astra Kallis’s accomplice.”
“According to my information, he returned to Temple with Alistair Sacker.”
Evelyn tightened her hands into fists. If Crispin had Alistair’s ear, that might explain why Astra Kallis had been left to roam free. If the giant lion was her.
Crispin and his almost-werewolves. What did he find in Astra Kallis instead?
She focused her mind on her immediate need for information from Julian. “So Julian teleported himself back to Ealing? My impression from him is that it’s a difficult piece of magic. More than he’d be capable of at the end of fighting his way free from Astra Kallis.”
“Ours also.”
Evelyn sucked in a quick breath. That wasn’t Trajan. It was Alexander Blackwood, Julian’s father. The head of the family. Trajan’s smooth tones were well suited to navigating the political reefs of the Shadow Council, to fishing up life-saving compromises. Alexander’s voice was one for speaking to the sky and compelling the stars to respond.
“Tell me what you know,” Alexander said, “about Julian’s next-door neighbours.”
After a few hours in the Shield Foundation’s situation room, on the third floor of their headquarters in Temple, Crispin would happily have stuck a fork in his eye. Or anyone’s eye.
“Yes, I really need to get going,” he said, shaking Alistair’s meaty hand. “As I said, I have quite a few calls to make in the morning.”
“If you insist,” Alistair replied. He reclaimed his hand and brushed at his moustache. “Though I cannot over-emphasise the importance of co-ordinating our efforts.”
“Don’t worry, I took notes.” Crispin patted the pocket of his suit jacket, where his phone rested. He thought that was going too far, that surely Alistair would sense the mockery.
But Alistair nodded. “We’ll touch base in the morning.” He had already turned back to the table stacked with print-outs and ring-binders, the ones he and his people shuffled about as though they had a hope of influencing the affairs they referenced.
Crispin kept his smile in place as he left the building. He kept it on even after he’d climbed into a cab. He wished the moon was full. Enough werewolf blood ran through his veins to give him a buzz. He wanted an excuse to let his anger run wild.
Instead, he made a call. “Nathaniel. Any word?”
“I found one of her people,” Nathaniel replied. “A little fellow named Diggory. According to
him, a group of people arrived in a flash of light and rescued Julian.”
“Rob Cromwell?”
“And Jacob Mandellan, if little Diggory is to be believed,” Nathaniel said. “And Alice.”
A police car, sirens screaming, went by in the other direction. “What happened to Astra?”
“He doesn’t know. He’s sure Tom and Liam are dead. Are you still at the Shield Foundation?”
“I’m heading home. I got tired of humouring them. Call me if you hear anything else about Astra.”
Alistair Sacker and his drones had only ever been a means to an end, a way to gather some protection while he and Astra worked towards their real goal. But if Astra was dead, if the ghost of the wizard was denied to him, that goal was beyond his reach.
Which left him dependent on the likes of Alistair and Nathaniel. But it could only be a matter of time before the old magician families worked around to blaming him for the death of Eleanora Whitlock.
He rubbed his chest and shoulder. Beneath his suit, his skin still showed the scars from where he’d been bitten by a patriarch of the Krag family. When he was tired or stressed, the scars ached.
Most were frightened when the time came for the ritual, but not him. He’d been eager for the fangs of the Krag patriarch assigned to turn him. His father.
And when the pain of the bite had dulled to a throb, when the wave of agony that tore through him had subsided, when he’d discovered he was still human, he knew he’d shamed both himself and his father beyond forgiveness.
The cab dropped him off in front of his apartment building in Notting Hill. His door was one of three in a four storey rectangle of dun brick and white-framed windows. Black overflow pipes ran downwards from the gutters like emaciated columns. His apartment was at the left side. The tenant on the right had let ivy vines stretch up and across the brickwork, as though ashamed of the building’s blandness. Crispin didn’t know who his neighbours were. He had made a point of never meeting them.
His apartment was dark. The only person he’d let in since taking up residence had been Astra. Tired, his mind spinning, he poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle on the kitchen counter. A red Astra had picked.
After his failure to turn, he’d fallen into a long bout of despair. The family shunted him off to a quiet residence where they didn’t have to see him. He fled for London within a month.
He and Astra had met in his first week, in a werewolf club in London’s east end. She’d told him her dream. Crispin had realised then that his failure to turn was destiny. He was meant for something more.
He took a long swallow of wine, yanked his tie free with his other hand and tossed it on the floor. His steps were slow and plodding as he made his way up to his bedroom. He didn’t know what he intended to do there. He didn’t know what he would do about any of it.
As his hand searched for the light switch in his bedroom, a growl rippled out of the dark.
“Don’t.”
Crispin froze.
He knew a little magic. He’d picked up a few things as he and his crew put the wizard’s ghost together and learned to lens it through Astra. But he’d been raised among werewolves. He knew that a little magic was nothing against the physical strength of whatever waited in the dark.
And then a sound he knew well: the crackle of shrinking bones; the whimpers of pain – a werewolf changing back to human form.
Soft feet padded across his carpet. He heard the sliding door of his cupboard open, heard the rattle of clothes hangers. Cloth pulled across skin.
“You can turn the light on now.”
Her voice.
But when he switched the light on, it wasn’t Astra.
He saw the difference straight away, though he couldn’t put his finger on what that difference was. Astra had always said she and her twin were exactly the same person. It was Zoe who stood in his bedroom in one of Astra’s bathrobes. He couldn’t explain it, but he was sure.
Maybe it was just because he knew that, while Astra had been able to hear a bead of sweat sliding across skin, Zoe’s gift was the ability to see in the dark.
“How did you get in?” he asked.
She sat on the corner of his bed. She moved differently – smoothly, with a physical grace Crispin recognised from those amongst whom he’d grown up.
“One of the windows on the top floor was unlocked,” Zoe said. “You should be more careful.”
“So–” His voice was a rasp. He gulped down a mouthful of wine. “So the reports of a giant lion haunting Hackney?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Haunting sounds like a vampire thing.”
“You killed her,” Crispin said. “You killed Astra. You went to Rob Cromwell, aimed him at us.”
“If I’d been the one in charge of our body the night you met Astra,” Zoe said, “if you’d made your bargain with me instead of her, I can promise you it would have been Astra sending Rob after me.” She rose to her feet again. Her hands were small against his chest. “And yes. I know what you’re wondering. The answer is yes. I’d have made the same bargain with you.”
Her eyes were different. Green instead of blue. It killed the illusion for him, that his Astra had come back. She saw the change in his expression and drew away.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I have some of Astra’s memories. They’re mostly a jumble, but I remember being here with you.”
“You remember her being here with me.” He turned from her. He almost threw the half-empty glass of wine. With a shaking hand, he set it on the bedside table.
Sometimes he had thought Astra was just using him. Sometimes he would see a remoteness in her sky-blue gaze and think that her feelings for him, if they were real at all, were secondary to her plans for him.
Seeing that expression on Zoe’s face made him burn with the feeling he’d been right.
“Do you still want your destiny?” Zoe asked. “Do you still want to be a god? Or are you happy with the authority you’ve gained on that broken little Council?”
He let out a single, scornful bark of laughter. “Schmoozing with the likes of Alistair Sacker is a dream come true. What are you getting at?”
She padded closer on her small, bare feet. She didn’t touch him, but she came close enough that she could have. “Call your people together. Begin the ghostcrafting ritual.” She smiled. “Silly Crispin. You can use me as the focus for the spell too. If we can find out where they’ve hidden the remains of the titan, you can still have what you really wanted.”
What he wanted. What he had wanted ever since he’d regained his senses on the floor of his family’s house, with the werewolf curse flaming out inside his flesh.
He crushed the part of himself that had loved Astra. He thought it should have hurt more, but it wasn’t so hard in the end.
“We know where it is from the Council’s records,” he said. “Or rather, we know that it’s in one of two places, both highly secure. They split them up after they brought them back from Iceland. You don’t remember what Astra got out of Julian?” She shook her head. “Then we need to get our hands on little Diggory.”
Mr Hawthorn closed the door behind him as quietly as he could. The lights were off on the top floor of Flat 1 Hawthorn House, but it was a simple thing, even with his fading abilities, to see in the dark. The door blurred and became featureless white wall.
The door to Jessica’s bedroom was open and the room was dark. It was late – she should have been in there. Mr Hawthorn made his way along the passageway. He brushed his hand against the door to the side room and saw Amelia sleeping alone in the big bed. She slept fitfully. The shadow world had reached out for her, out for her family, into her home. She had not adjusted yet. More slow steps brought him to the closed door of the bedroom at the back of the flat. Light seeped out from under it. He pressed his gnarled hand against the cheap pinewood.
Jessica was asleep in Fiona’s room, her head nestled against Fiona’s shoulder. Fiona
was awake, one hand behind her head. She stared at the ceiling and her eyes moved back and forth as her thoughts jumped along pathways he dared not investigate, for fear of catching her attention.
It was enough to know her mind had found those paths. The Blackwood boy had shown her the door and pointed out the key already in her hand. As Mr Hawthorn had intended.
Blackwoods. Sometimes they could be useful.
He crossed through a temporary hallway into Flat 2. Rob was curled in a foetal position under his covers. Human in shape again, but the residue of the spell used against him lingered. It steamed off him, as though his altered flesh were boiling out a poison.
Mr Hawthorn was more cautious extending his senses through the door of Julian’s bedroom. He too should be deep in exhausted sleep, after fighting a rampaging Rob to a standstill.
But the room beyond the closed door was empty.
Puzzled, wary, Mr Hawthorn cast his senses about. There was no one else on the top floor besides Rob. The bathroom and third bedroom were both empty.
He turned along another passage and emerged on the ground floor near the front door. The kitchen was empty as well. Was Julian watching late-night TV in the living room? No sound murmured down the hallway. He hobbled to the entrance of the living room.
And jerked back.
Julian stood in the middle of the room. He had turned his body side-on, but Mr Hawthorn could see the bandages wrapped around his chest and shoulder beneath the open button-up shirt. Julian’s arm was straight out, pointed at Mr Hawthorn. His hand held a gun.
Mr Hawthorn’s old purple lips peeled back from his worn teeth. When he spoke, his voice bubbled with rising anger. His gift lit inside him like coals burning back to life. “You think a gun is any threat to me, boy?”
Julian didn’t flinch. “You think this is just a normal gun?”
Chapter 27 – The Ancient
Julian followed the old man through the kitchen and out the back door. The December night made him shiver. At least the old man had let him grab his coat before they went outside.
Immortal Make Page 28