by Rosie Best
I looked again at Ben. “Why, what happened?”
“She took him,” Addie whispered. “She hurt him.”
I shifted back around the barrier until I was a close to Ben as I can get, but he was sitting almost right in the middle and his head was down, leaning on his knees.
“Ben? Can you look at me?”
He raised his head, and I stifled a gasp. He had a black eye and a long, shallow tear right down his cheek. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was weeping a horrid pale liquid. There were livid bruises coming up all over his chest and his arms.
“Why did she do this?”
“She knew,” Ben said miserably. “This is all my fault.”
“How could it be your fault?” Don asked.
Ben shook his head and his face flushed blotchily, on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think it was important, I didn’t think you’d even notice it was gone...”
“Oh you total wanker,” said Rand, but he kept his voice soft and his face twisted with sympathy. “You took the bloody stone!”
“What the hell for?” I demanded.
“I sold it. To pay for a – a holiday. That’s why I haven’t been around lately.”
I glanced up at Don. His face was deep purple. He seemed too stunned to speak.
“But why did she hurt you?” Rand asked.
“He hasn’t said,” Don added.
“She said if I told you she’d have me thrown out of the window. I think she might actually do it,” he moaned. “She shoved my face right up against the glass! Have you looked down recently?”
I had. I remembered the sound in my head like a swarm of bees and red clouds obscuring my vision.
“All right. I have to get the stones. That’s all we can do right now,” I said, looking over at James and Roxie.
“Oh, is that all,” Roxie said.
I stood up, my knees weak underneath me. What were my chances of going snooping around Victoria’s apartment looking for the stones without getting caught? Slim to none. Still…
Sssssssssssssssss
I twisted on the spot, almost lost my balance, stared towards the corridor. I knew that chemical hiss.
Mo had both hands around the middle of a mad, pecking pigeon. It was coated in white spray paint and flapping madly, flicking paint into his eyes. He wrestled silently with it but his hands slipped on the paint-slick feathers.
I broke into a run, too late to stop the pigeon landing one, two, three hard blows on Mo’s face with its beak, drawing blood. He dug his teeth into his lip to keep from screaming.
I grabbed the pigeon by the neck as its head bobbed viciously forwards to try to take out Mo’s eye, and dragged it off him. Its wings beat around me and I smacked it into the wall, hard, just to try to stun it, to get it to stop before one of us broke and cried out loud enough for Victoria to hear.
I felt the delicate neck bones snap under my hand and the bird flapped for a horrible second longer before going limp and tumbling out of my fingers in a shower of feathers. Its wings spread white paint across the floor where it fell, a ghost impression of a bird.
Mo gathered me into a hug.
“Thank you,” he whispered into my hair. Then he pulled away and gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. He edged down the corridor towards the lift, wiping the blood and paint from his eyes, listening for signs the struggle had been overheard.
I didn’t take my eyes off the pigeon. Under the coating of paint, it was plump and brown. Its wings were strong and its feathers were messy. Bits of down still floated in the air around me.
I waited, tears searing down my cheeks, holding my sobs in my chest, trying not to make a sound. I waited for the pigeon to stretch and morph into the corpse of my father.
I couldn’t think of anything worse, until I realised that it wasn’t going to.
I fell back against the wall and slid to the ground, folding my arms around me and over my face as if I could physically contain the wails that rose into my throat. I bit down hard on the neck of my hoodie and forced myself to choke them back.
Dad was dead. Mum was dead. They had been dead from the minute she changed them. My dad was never, ever coming back. Not even in death.
Mo came back and fell to his knees beside me, a horrified question forming on his lips, and all I could do was point to the corpse with a quivering hand and then fold up into myself. My throat and chest were burning up from holding in the sound of my breathing. If I’d allowed myself to make a sound I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but scream.
I wished for this. I wished that they were dead, because it would be easier for me. Easier. I deserved to be carried off and fed to the fog, right now. Did I try to save him, really try? Did I do everything I could? His neck snapped in my hands. I wanted to cut them off at the wrist. I could have called all Victoria’s minions to me, to finish the job, with one good scream... but Mo, but James, but Addie, but the Skulk and the Horde and Peter and all that was left of the Cluster.
I had to get them out of here.
I was going to get to those stones, and if I couldn’t save them, I would destroy them.
Mo’s arms slipped under mine. He lifted me to my feet. I swiped my arm through the air and pointed, furiously. He had to keep watch! The Skulk were already being careless with their voices, calling out to me, asking what was wrong.
Mo pulled away, but he was replaced at once. James’ arms wrapped around me and he held on tight to the back of my head. I sucked in a breath, intending to gather myself, and only succeeded in letting out a tiny, hideous, strangled wail.
“Dad,” I choked out. “He’s gone.”
James held me for a few minutes, my tears soaking into his shoulder.
I balled my fists in my sleeves and wiped at my eyes and nose, getting rid of the worst of the sticky, trying to clear my vision. More sobs rose out of the ground and hit me like the aftershocks from a terrible earthquake, but I managed to get to my knees, and then shakily to my feet.
“All right, darlings, listen up,” James said very quietly, taking charge, not looking at me. “There’s nothing more we can do here, we’re going to find the stones and try to break whatever this is.” He kicked the barrier. “Pay attention: if the box comes down, you all need to run – to the end of the corridor and turn left. There’s a fire exit. Get out, go down the stairs and do not stop running.”
“Anyone who gets out, meet at my mum’s place,” said Mo. “Peter, you can get them there, right?”
Peter nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Roxie stood up. “I’m going with them,” she said to Amanda.
“Good luck,” said the Horde leader. “And if you see Ryan, kick his arse.”
“Will do,” said Roxie, with a little salute.
The four of us backed away into the corridor. Roxie looked down at the body of the pigeon and then up at my red eyes, but didn’t say anything.
“I think they’re still upstairs,” said James. “So let’s search downstairs first.”
I nodded silently.
James led the way, treading silently. Mo gave us a thumbs up as we passed and hung back to bring up the rear. Miraculously, I could still hear Victoria and Fran, talking upstairs. They hadn’t heard the pigeon attack, or my sobs.
We passed the lift and came out into the airy sitting room. I glanced at the floor-to-ceiling glass and dearly wished I didn’t know that Victoria was willing to use her wizard’s tower as a blunt instrument. There was a glass and steel spiral staircase in one corner of the room, leading up to the second floor. With a single silent glance, we all agreed to go the other way.
I crept into the kitchen. It was similar in size and design to our industrial sized entertaining kitchen at home, though nothing here was padlocked. I guessed that meant she wasn’t keeping the stones in her spoon drawer, but Mo and I hurried to silently open every drawer and cupboard, just in case.
Through the dining room, there was another corridor. An enormous, gleaming ba
throom with a shower that would even put my mum’s to shame. A library and media room with a TV screen the size of Texas, a plush and comfy-looking eggshell blue sofa, and crammed bookshelves.
It wasn’t all specially purchased antique books that nobody had ever read, either – there were lots of well-thumbed paperbacks on philosophy, politics, history, sociology and psychiatry. I pulled a couple down, just in case I could find a lever that would reveal a secret passage… but nothing moved.
James crept past me. He paused to give a copy of Mein Kampf the serious side-eye, and then opened the door to the next room.
Tendrils of grey mist shot out and sucked him in. He let out a yell, and it was cut off as the fog closed over his head. I saw him lifted off his feet in the swirling current. He writhed and kicked and twitched in agony.
I drew out my spray paint, aimed and fired. A spatter of black spots hit the fog and whirled around James, boiling and pulsating, but nothing else came from the can except a weak hissing sound.
I get through Black so quickly. I should’ve brought the Pastel Rose.
“Meg!” Mo threw his can across the room and I snatched it out of the air, turned and fired. White paint burst from it, filling the fog cloud with crackling dots of ink. James vanished completely into the opaque cloud, and I heard him scream.
The cloud burst. White paint rained down, covering the room beyond, which was a closet full of Victoria’s coats, her hats and her shoes. James knelt among them, panting and trembling and spitting out mouthfuls of paint.
Relief stole all the tension from my body and I sagged back. I allowed the paint can to be taken from my hand. Then someone seized one of my arms and pressed something hard and cold against my neck.
“Hello, Meg,” said Fran. I tried to pull away. “Ah, I wouldn’t. If you don’t care for your own throat, how about the butterfly’s?” She pressed the knife tight against my skin and turned me so we could see a young man holding Mo with another knife under his chin.
“I’ll cut his throat,” he said, “if you don’t do exactly what we say.”
I turned my head, very carefully, and looked up into Fran’s eyes.
“You’d better take me to Victoria,” I said. “I want a word.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I saw Roxie and James exchange assessing looks as we were marched along another bright, panelled corridor. We outnumbered them, four to two…
A searing pain sliced across my throat and I stumbled to a halt. For a second, I thought I was going to die. The sensation drew me in, until I was nowhere but the skin on my neck, seeing nothing but pink mist. I could’ve fainted... but I wasn’t dying. A red ache throbbed under my skin. Blood trickled down my neck and soaked into my clothes and I wanted to raise a hand to it, to feel how bad the cut was, but Fran held me tight against her and pressed the sticky blade to my face.
“It would be inconvenient for me to kill any of you right now, but I’ll take one of her eyes,” Francesca warned.
Fran held on tight to my arm, and dragged me up the spiral staircase to the second floor.
Four pigeons, red-eyed and sharp-beaked, shot along the corridor and battered around our heads. One of them had the skinny, slick body and dark grey feathers – but it wasn’t my mother. My mum had been dead since the moment Victoria and her pigeons had tapped out that horrid rhythm on my drawing room window.
I tried to get my bearings. One big room dominated most of the second floor. Apart from a few load-bearing girders, it was open and almost completely empty. London surrounded us on three sides – the windows were as huge and clear as the ones on the viewing level. On the fourth side, behind us, there was a wall with a doorway that led into the gallery over the dining room.
I almost hadn’t been far off when I’d guessed it might be a ballroom. The floor was made of wood, inlaid with spiralling patterns of light and dark, like the rays of the sun bursting out from a five-pointed star at the centre.
Fran released me and took up a position between us and the staircase, with her knife held to gut anyone who tried to make a run for it. There was no other way to escape the circle. Ryan released Mo, and he stepped over to press his hand into mine. I clutched onto it and glared at Fran.
Is this the knife you killed Blackwell with?
I wanted to grab it from her and throw it from the top of the Shard.
He tried to help me, and he didn’t deserve to be gutted by a traitor. Another thought followed that one, panting at its heels like a faithful dog. He may have known more than he let on, more than I know even now. And now he’ll never be able to tell me the rest of it.
At one edge of the circle, Victoria stood by a small table full of... things. There were a lot of blades and edges, some vials of clear liquid, screws, wide and glistening metal harnesses. There was a roll of wire, a silvery hammer, and a small blowtorch.
I wondered if you were supposed to be able to tell the difference between magic and torture.
Victoria turned, gave a little smile and waved Fran over.
She was wearing three of the stones. They’d been set into gold and she was wearing them around her neck. There were two empty settings too. She really was after the set. Three stars sparked out at me from the three stones: red, blue and... white.
Wait, a white stone?
The Rabble stone was yellow.
She had the Conspiracy stone. The power of the mind.
I ground my teeth with annoyance and felt the flap of skin slide, opening and closing, dribbling blood down the other side of my neck.
The Conspiracy. In their smart uniforms, in their supposedly impenetrable tower. It was their stone Victoria had stolen first – of course it was.
I wondered if Blackwell knew, or if he suspected, but he just didn’t want to let on that he knew, not even to me. Or maybe he believed it was safe.
Victoria pressed her hands to her chest and shut her eyes. The stones glowed. The red Skulk stone gave off a heat haze and the floor beneath my feet shuddered. One of the dark inlaid lines buckled and rose up like a snake, curled around and between my legs, and then turned back to solid wood, trapping me in place before I knew what was happening. Another pinned Mo’s feet, and the next got Roxie around the waist. James almost moved in time, but the wood leapt up and smacked the backs of his legs so hard he buckled to his knees and was trapped there.
I tried to move my legs, to press against the wood, but it had gone completely solid; strong and dark as mahogany roots. It would be easier to break my own legs than break their bonds.
Well, at least I knew what my absolute last resort move was going to be.
Victoria picked up a gleaming silver implement with a black handle, and walked towards us.
“Welcome to my home,” she said. “I hope you’re enjoying the view.”
I glared at her. Her dress was pale, creamy yellow silk and white lace. She should’ve been dressed like a sorceress, all black and pointy. Instead, she looked like she was going to a summer cocktail party right after she’d finished with all the kidnap and murder.
She stood in front of the four of us and turned the silver thing in her hands. It was a pair of heavy, sharp-toothed pliers.
“I have a question,” she said. “I’m just trying to think who would answer it best.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Why did you hurt Ben?”
“I thought I could get him to confess,” said Victoria. “It was a stab in the dark. I’m very glad you’re here, Meg. I think you’re the one that’s going to be able to help me now.”
“You’ve got our stone,” I said through my teeth. “I can’t help you with anything.”
“We’ll see,” said Victoria. “Tell me, which one of the Skulk is the leodweard?”
“Oh…” So she knew. Of course she did – there were seven of us and we were all here. Something rebellious sparked inside me and I scowled. “So Fran’s stupid mix-and-match plan didn’t work after all?” I glanced at Fran. Her face was like thunder.
“It was a slightly stupid plan,” Victoria agreed. “But you should be polite to your betters. You can hurt her,” she said to Fran. “But just a little.”
I twitched in my wooden leg clamps and wobbled as Fran walked up to me. “Fran, don’t.” My voice sounded pathetic and childish. She raised her knife, as if weighing where best to stick me. Then she touched the tip to my forehead.
“Keep still if you don’t want an unscheduled lobotomy,” she grinned.
The pain was intense, deep in my skull. I let out a wail as she ran her knife right down the middle of my forehead, all the way to my nose. Blood streamed down my cheeks, mingling with my tears.
“All right, that’s enough.”
Fran stepped back at once.
“I want the metashifter,” said Victoria, “And now I know I already have them. I just don’t know which of you it is. So I’ll give you one more chance.” She pointed her pliers at me, and then at James. “Give the metashifter up to me and you’ll die quickly and painlessly. Final offer.”
“I don’t know,” I said quickly. “I really don’t. Could be anyone.”
“Don’t look at me, darling,” James muttered. I glanced at him, blinking the blood out of my eyes. Could I believe him? Would he believe me, for that matter? I didn’t know who the metashifter was, but he didn’t know that.
Victoria sighed. “All right, well, I apologise if this is unnecessary, but I have to be sure.” Her hand snaked out and pointed at Mo.
“Fran, bring the boy.”
“No!” I yelled. “He’s not it, he’s from the Rabble, it’s a Skulk shifter you want!”
“Yes, I know,” said Victoria. She grabbed my elbow. The wood holding me up suddenly gave way and I staggered forwards, barely keeping my feet as she dragged me across the floor to the window. She thrust me up against it, my face right beside the thin layer of basically nothing between me and a sixty-five storey drop. Then she spun me around and yanked my wrists together, binding them in front of me with some kind of silver wire.
Fran had walked Mo over to us, with her knife digging into his back. I saw him wince and a trickle of blood stain the edge of his T-shirt. She positioned him in front of the table of horrible silver implements.