“I said get that thing out of here!” she said.
They hoisted the black sarcophagus again and hurried for the door.
Chapter 29 – Titan Bones
Fiona thumbed End Call on her phone. “He’s ready. Bring him here.”
Jessica grabbed the big lever on the control panel of her teleporter pad and pulled it down. Electrical coils thrummed and sparked. Julian appeared on the teleporter pad in a blaze of white light.
“You look awful,” Fiona said.
“Coincidentally, that’s how I feel,” he said as he stepped off the pad. He was paler than usual, with dark circles under his eyes and slumped shoulders. But he didn’t miss the bandage around Jessica’s wrist. “I take it I’m about to find out the cause of that?”
Fiona put her arm around Jessica’s shoulder and Jessica allowed it. “We’ll show you. Come on.”
The main hallway of the Royal Cartographers’ base – Jessica’s lair – was a mess. Mr Shell had bounced off walls as he hurtled down the corridor. He had smashed pictures off walls, taken out two light-fittings and reduced the contents of a storage cupboard at the end of the hallway to tinder. Fiona’s boots crunched on broken glass as she led the way to the garage.
It was much as it had been when a furious and embarrassed Jessica had shown her through. The lair’s automatons were so much scrap. Mr Shell ambled through their parts, nosing them into a tidy pile. Mr Beak perched on the railing by the tunnel to the Russel Square station, keeping watch. The door remained half-wrenched off its hinges. The glass of the observation room’s window had been blown into the observation room itself.
The hole in the garage floor smelled of dry clay.
“At least we know for sure which side Zoe is on now,” Fiona said. She still had her arm round Jessica’s shoulder.
Julian grunted. “Poor Rob.”
“What actually happened when Rob shoved your sword through Astra?” Fiona asked. She’d puzzled over it. She’d sensed the change, but not understood it. “They were two minds in one body?”
“They were two bodies in one body, I think,” Julian replied. “That’s what shapeshifters are, if you want to think of it that way. The awakening ritual was supposed to call out the werewolf they thought was inside her. When the ritual was disrupted, it carried on without direction.”
“And called out the two bodies inside the one body,” Fiona said. “Chimeric twins. The two of them, born as one.”
“I told you that’s how it must have worked,” Jessica said.
Fiona followed Julian to the hole’s edge. He peered in. A tired sigh escaped him.
“The thing down there, it was one of them?” Fiona asked.
“The other one from Iceland,” Julian said. “The one the Hargraves didn’t use. I never found out where they hid the second one, but I didn’t need to know. It was obvious the thing under Trafalgar Square had to be one of them. I got the answer I needed from there.”
“It must be written down somewhere in the Council archives,” Fiona said. “Crispin must have read it after he got onto the Council.” Her hand tightened on Jessica’s shoulder. “What’s it even doing here? With all the crazy security around Trafalgar Square, what is this one doing in a hole in the ground?”
“A hole in the ground in a room surrounded by traps in a place few ever knew existed, let alone knew how to find,” Julian said. “Everyone knows that Evelyn Hargrave has something big and powerful as a spell-focus down there with her. My family was involved and even I didn’t know there were two of them until I looked into it.”
“It’s not like they forgot about it,” Jessica said. “I found a radio signaller in the observation room that’s decades newer than the rest of the place. The sensor wiring to my lair’s entrances is a mess though. It should have sent out a pulse when I broke in here the first time.”
“What now, Julian?” Fiona asked.
He shrugged. “Zoe and Crispin have what they need.”
“But do they have the knowledge? You made a big deal about Astra having all of Savraith’s power, but none of his knowledge. From the looks of things under Trafalgar Square, making use of one of these” – she waved at the hole in the ground – “ancient evil things isn’t easy.”
“Oh, using the titan isn’t difficult,” Julian said. “Using it safely, that’s the trick. That’s why there’s so much equipment plugged into the sarcophagus under Trafalgar Square. If you don’t care about collateral damage, about blowing a big hole in London for example, then it’s all much easier. No, it will take them some time to perform whatever ritual they have in mind, but they have what they need.”
“And then they all become werewolves?” Fiona asked. “Even the ones that didn’t turn, like Crispin?”
“More than werewolves,” Julian said. “More than Rob, even. They’ll be–” He waved a hand around, searching for a word.
“Like the being in the tomb in Norway,” Fiona said.
He sighed again. “Yes, they’ll be beings of that magnitude. With grudges against everyone else in the shadow world.”
“As if the war that’s going to start tonight isn’t bad enough,” Fiona said. Everyone had been talking about it at work, about the way Julian had crushed the Shadow Council, about what it meant for the vampires and the werewolves and their endless hatred of each other.
Julian had the grace to look embarrassed.
Collateral damage, Fiona thought. Monsters killing each other, innocent people getting caught in the middle, Rob’s panicked explanation about the grey men and the Covenant. Plus whatever Zoe and Crispin managed to throw into the mix.
And Sorcha, never far away, testing her and not caring who got hurt in the process.
“Right,” Fiona said. “Right. I’ve had more than enough of this. We’re getting everyone together at my place. There’s a way to stop the world from burning down tonight and we’re going to figure out what it is.”
Zoe rode back to the Essex airfield in a car with Garry. He’d tried to throw his weight around and drive the van carrying the sarcophagus instead, but Zoe insisted. After what they’d seen her do in the underground garage, she didn’t have to insist too strongly.
They pulled up inside the hangar, just inside the entrance. Garry and the two in the back seats made straight for the van once the engine was off. Zoe followed at a slower pace, putting on a show of being sure of herself.
“Here she is!” Crispin came towards them with his arms wide. “I knew you could do it.” The men from the ghost machine crew were right behind him. The Russians came last.
“We had trouble,” Zoe said. “There was a bunch of funny, old-fashioned robots there. I think a little girl was controlling them.”
“Nothing you couldn’t handle,” Crispin said. With a hand on the small of her back, he steered her towards the van.
“I think it was the same little girl from the group who came to rescue Julian Blackwood,” Zoe said, shaking off his touch. “She mentioned Rob.”
Crispin barely noticed her rebuff. “You dealt with that lot. Let’s see the prize.”
She grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks. “Your big plan to keep Rob and Julian out of the way fell apart, remember? What if they’re on their way here now?”
“We are safe here, Zoe,” Pavel said. He and his grandfather had come up behind them, their booted feet somehow silent on the concrete floor. “The shading wards set around the hangar are intact.”
Crispin lost patience with her. “We always knew we’d have to act fast at this stage. We’re ready. Now, let’s take a look at our dear old ancestor.”
Garry and the others had taken the sarcophagus out of the van. They worked the edges of the black metal lid with crowbars.
Pavel muttered something to his grandfather in Russian. Konstantin replied. “What?” Zoe asked.
Pavel gestured to the sarcophagus. “It is void steel. It is priceless.”
“Oh that’s not true,” Crispin said. He kept rubbing his hands t
ogether. “It’s just terribly valuable. The contents are priceless.”
Garry and the others got the sarcophagus open.
The hangar lights flickered. The engines of the van and the other car coughed into life. Their headlights flashed, their horns blared once. Zoe felt a pull towards what lay in the sarcophagus, as though a magnet tugged on her bones. She felt the beast rise up inside her. It was new, too new for her to control. It was going to break free.
I’m going to kill everyone here, Zoe thought, amused rather than horrified.
And then it let her go. It rushed out of her like a held breath. Zoe pressed her hands against her thighs to keep them from trembling.
“I felt that,” Crispin whispered. He pushed past the others to the sarcophagus.
Pavel’s expression, so often unreadable, was lit with joy. He turned to his grandfather. Konstantin looked satisfied.
“What is it?” Diggory asked from beside the sarcophagus.
“Our future,” Crispin said. “All our futures.”
Zoe threaded through the cluster of men to Crispin’s side. She leaned over the sarcophagus.
It was plain metal, big enough to hold a being half again as tall as a human. What lay inside stretched its full length.
“It’s just bones,” Diggory said, looking like he’d been kicked.
“Of course it is,” Crispin said. “What did you expect?” Though he couldn’t have known either.
The bones were steel.
If the creature had been buried with any of its flesh intact, it was gone. Some of the connective tissue between the bones remained, having petrified instead of rotted away. It was humanoid. But not human.
The fingers of one hand were long and thin, as though they’d supported the membrane of a wing. The other was a vicious canine claw. A tail curled beneath it, barbed at the end with cruel spikes. Its skull was long and its mouth full of fangs. At one side of its head, a horn curled upwards from above the ear. At the other, a tusk followed the line of the jaw.
“It died changing,” Zoe said. “Shifting from one shape to another.”
“More proof it’s our ancestor.” Crispin reached down and touched one of its ribs.
A spark jumped from the steel bones to his hand. Crispin snatched his arm back with a gasp.
Then he grinned. “Wouldn’t you know. It bites.”
Crispin’s men laughed. The Russians didn’t.
Neither did Zoe.
Fiona pulled the front door of Flat 2 Hawthorn House open. “Going to invite me in?” Jacob asked.
“You’re not funny,” she replied. “Hurry up, you’re the last one here.”
He wore a sharp grey suit but no coat, so she assumed he’d parked close by. He didn’t take his gloves off when he came inside, though.
He saw her notice, lifted one hand and closed it into a fist. Then he turned it over to show her the circle of tiny runes marked in white on the black leather. “I still don’t have all my fine motor control.”
“And you just happened to have a pair of magic gloves lying around?”
He shrugged. “I know a guy.”
“Come on, we’re down the back.”
She led him through the kitchen and into the new room that had appeared at the back of the flat. Fiona’s mother had gone online and bought cheap used plastic outdoor furniture and set it up in the middle of the room. Fiona guessed that furnishing it was Amelia’s way of taking control of rooms magically appearing in the flat. Jessica, Rob, Julian and Alice were already seated in the flimsy chairs around the yellowed, scratched table.
Rob was already on his feet, fists quivering. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Him? He tried to kill us.”
“Yes him,” Fiona said. “We need all the help we can get. Sit down, Rob.”
He turned in mute appeal to Julian, but Julian remained silent as Jacob took the seat next to Alice. Fiona was relieved. If she had to argue from the very start, they might not get anywhere.
Fiona sat at the head of the table. “Can you hear us, Evelyn?”
“Well enough.” Julian’s phone sat in the centre of the table.
Fiona had rehearsed her first words over and over in the hour it had taken to get everyone together. She took a breath and began. “Zoe and Crispin have obtained the corpse of a being like the one Evelyn uses as a spell-focus under Trafalgar Square. We think they mean to use it to make themselves into true shapeshifters, maybe more than that.
“Astra and Crispin murdered their way onto the Shadow Council,” Fiona said. “Zoe has picked up where Astra left off. According to Julian, their goal once they become shapeshifters is to take control of Britain. They want to rule it and seal it off from the rest of the world.
“The key in their plan is this corpse they’ve taken,” she continued. “We’re going to take it back.”
She expected Julian to argue it was someone else’s job and then for Rob to disagree. But Julian watched her in silence, the circles beneath his eyes seeming even darker than before.
Maybe he’s taking this one personally, the voice in the back of her mind said.
She told herself that would do.
“What is it, anyway?” Jessica asked. “Is it like the body in Norway?”
“No,” Evelyn said. “Far worse.”
When she didn’t elaborate, Fiona said, “Julian?”
He shifted in his chair, but he spoke. “The creatures with the crystal bones are their children. They’re half human, you might say. The creatures we found in Iceland were – well, we call them titans because we don’t want to call them gods.”
“The ritual that binds the London plague dead in their graves is perhaps the largest and most powerful working in the entire world,” Evelyn said. “And this is a spell to preserve. It is far easier to destroy.”
“Crispin and Astra demonstrated they’re willing to get aggressive,” Fiona said. “Once he and Zoe are shapeshifters, I don’t like to think about how they plan to take control of London’s different factions.”
“Messily, I would think,” Alice murmured. Her pale skin was still tinged with grey.
“You said this is the power that burned the world down twice, Julian.” Jacob sat with his arms folded across his chest. “What does that mean?”
Julian’s tone was not pleased. “I thought you’d ask.”
“Hey, just curious.”
Fiona stepped in before they started arguing. “Julian?”
He answered, though she was sure he didn’t want to. “The two ancient civilisations, one in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific – we don’t know a lot about them. We do know they lasted millennia and that they were so advanced they made modern western civilisation look like dark ages Europe. We know they were at war, maybe many times over many centuries. We also know that they weren’t the oldest or greatest powers ever to walk the earth.”
“The titans,” Alice said, drinking in his words.
Julian nodded. “Dead, or as dead as these things get. Buried in the earth. Each side must have found one at about the same time as the other. The Atlantean civilisation found the ones in Iceland. They used one of them to make the first shapeshifters. I don’t know where the other civilisation found a titan, but they used it to make the vampires.”
“Could they have found the Lord of Chains?” Fiona asked. “That’s one of them, right?”
“It is, but no,” Julian said. “At least, I don’t think so. I could tell straightaway one of the two titans found in Iceland was used to make the shapeshifters. I could sense it. The Lord of Chains doesn’t have that same similar sense with regard to vampires.”
“So they made the werewolves and the vampires,” Jacob said. “What then?”
Fiona didn’t like the sharp edge to his curiosity. She still thought they would need him.
“Eventually they started tapping the titan corpses directly,” Julian said. “They hit each other with bigger and bigger forms of magic. They started with the simple things, like blasting each other
with fire, then went deeper into things like nightmare warfare, massive probability conflicts – luck wars, you could call them,” he added, when he saw their confusion. “Then they tore at the fabric of the world itself. One side or the other scarred the earth so that we can no longer draw magic from the sun. In their final battle they annihilated each other entirely. They unmade each other so thoroughly nothing remains of either landmass, as though they’d never been. And they burned up all the world’s magic doing it.”
Silence fell around the table as they imagined the ancient conflict. Fiona remembered showing Charo modern London in one of their earliest meetings. She remembered the horror in his voice as he whispered, What did we do?
“And that was the second time the world burned?” Jacob asked. “What was the first?”
“When the titans fought each other,” Julian said. “They destroyed whatever world they ruled so thoroughly that no direct proof of it exists, other than the titans themselves.”
“So we find out where they’ve taken the titan corpse and get it back,” Fiona said. “No matter what it takes.”
“How do we find it?” Rob asked.
“It’ll be obvious enough once they start whatever ritual they have in mind,” Julian said “Until then, I don’t know. They can use the power of Savraith’s ghost to hide themselves.”
“Which is a problem all by itself,” Jacob said. “How do we take on Zoe if she’s swinging the wizard’s ghost around?”
Julian lifted his head as if to speak, caught himself and remained silent. Fiona thought Jacob missed it, but she didn’t. Neither did Alice.
“That’s not our first problem,” Fiona said. “Finding them is. If we wait until they start their ritual, not only do we run the risk they’ll complete it before we arrive, but we’ll have to race everyone else to the site as well. No one will stay away from this. Evelyn, any ideas?”
“I can’t penetrate whatever shading wards they have in place,” she replied.
“Neither can I,” Jessica said. “They’ve been clever about hiding themselves and I don’t know where to start looking.”
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