Skulk

by Rosie Best

  The wood where he was standing snaked up again, more of it this time. It twisted and snaked around him until he was lying at forty-five degrees, his arms pinned.

  “Feel free to try to run,” said Victoria, when I looked down at my own unbound hands. “If you want to hurt him very, very badly.”

  I met Mo’s eyes. His lips twisted in horror and he gave a tiny shake of his head. But I don’t think he was telling me run, or don’t run. Just, No, all of this is wrong.

  “I don’t know who it is,” I said weakly. “I swear I don’t. If you hurt him I’ll just start blurting names; that won’t actually help you, will it?”

  I glanced back at Mo. He was shaking. I looked away again, my chest tightening painfully.

  “Come here,” said Victoria, crossing to the little table of horrid implements and beckoning me over, with a smile, as if I had a choice. Panic struck and I tried to dig in my heels, but Fran picked up a pair of scissors and raised them to Mo’s ear, and I staggered forwards.

  “I’m going, don’t, I’m going.”

  “Meg,” Victoria said, putting the silver pliers down on the table and not, for the moment, picking up anything else. “I really don’t want to have to torture anyone, it’s always such a waste of time in the end.”

  “Why don’t you just use the fog?” I said, exhausted and confused and unable to look at Mo. “Summon some more of it and use it on me, then you’ll know for sure everything I know.”

  Victoria didn’t answer.

  That was weird.

  I looked down. The cloud parted and I saw the Thames glistening grey and cold, bending around the Southbank and Waterloo as it flowed towards us out of the east. I could make out the Eye, Parliament, the green vastness of Hyde Park.

  A burst of homesickness hit me and I swallowed hard. I never knew you could miss a place so much while you were standing in the heart of it.

  And then I looked up from the swirling cloud. “You can’t use the fog because that would kill me,” I muttered, my voice harsh and whispery. “You can’t just kill us off until you find the right one, because our shift would go to the closest human, and that’s you.”

  I half expected Victoria to lash out at me or give Fran the order to hurt Mo – but she smiled. “There you go!” she said, as if she was genuinely pleased with the fact that I’d come to this conclusion. “Hence, I’m afraid, the torture. I have to find out who has it without killing any of you. I wouldn’t get too happy about that, if I were you, there are significantly worse things than death.”

  “And you want the metashift for yourself. So if you kill the wrong one of us first, you’ll be stuck with the Skulk shift.”

  “And that would really ruin my day,” she said.

  I looked down at the table of implements, and then up at Mo.

  I could ruin her day right now. I could kill myself, slice open a vein with any one of those and force her to take my shift. It wouldn’t get the stones back, but it would put something in her way. She wouldn’t be able to take everything.

  The only problem was that I really, really didn’t want to die.

  But if it saves Mo… if it saves James and Addie and Susanne…

  But would it? Or would it just make you feel you were actually doing something?

  “Why do you want to be the metashifter?” I said, buying time while I climbed down from that particular ledge.

  “You see these?” She ran a hand over the stones at her neck. The air crackled with static and my hair prickled, frizzing up almost as if I was in a cartoon. “The metashifter can do anything they want, go anywhere they want, take any stone they want, even if the other shifters have protected it. The leodweard is like a wild card, or a failsafe against corruption.”

  “Blackwell said it was their responsibility to keep the stones safe. Keep them apart,” I said.

  Victoria draped an arm around my shoulders and tapped my nose with one finger, like you’d do to a small child. Did she think I’d giggle? I thought seriously about biting her finger off.

  “It’s all about perspective. The metashifter could keep them apart, or bring them together. Obviously, I’m going for the latter.”

  I glanced out over London again. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why do you want this ultimate weapon thing anyway? Are you really going to destroy it all?”

  “Destroy? God, no. Rule.” Victoria smiled down at the view, and then up at me. “All I want is all the power available to me. You can understand that, I’m sure.”

  She gave my shoulders a squeeze. I wanted to punch her in the face but could only twitch my hands against the wire.

  “We actually have a lot in common, Meg.”

  I racked my brains. She seemed to think I’d know what she meant, but nothing came to mind.

  “We both have excellent reasons to hate our parents,” she said.

  “I didn’t hate my dad,” I snarled. “He was… he was…”

  “He never helped you. Did he?” Victoria said. “He never stood up to your mother. He let her hurt you and belittle you and never once considered that you were an innocent girl whose only crime was not being exactly what they wanted.”

  I sniffed back tears again, just like she wanted me to, but I frowned up at her through them. That was all a little too specific to just be about me.

  “Why, what did your dad do to you?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer – but every moment she wasn’t torturing or killing anyone was a good moment right now.

  “He treated me like I was less than human,” she said. “Victoria Martin is my married name, my maiden name was Olaye.”

  I stared at her, my jaw dropping. “Oh, what the–”

  “Donny is my little brother. He doesn’t even know it’s me who’s captured him and his little gang, yet. I’m saving that particular pleasure for later.”

  “But – but–”

  “The Skulk runs in my family. It runs from father to son.” Victoria’s pleasant psychopath façade fell away and her face turned stony. “My father was king of all he surveyed. From his little suburban castle. He led the Skulk, and my mother and my aunts all served him, whatever he wanted, he got.”

  I glanced at Mo, while Victoria went on talking. He had his eyes firmly closed. Fran was trimming her fingernails with the silver scissors and dropping the trimmings onto his face.

  “I was born wrong, born female, so I became a servant too. Little Prince Don got everything. Dad died when I was twelve and Don was six. Don got the shift, and I was expected to just let him lord it over me for the rest of his life.” She shook her head. “I got out of there as soon as I could hold down a job. I improved myself. I did my research. And then I took the only thing more powerful than what my father had.” Her fingers strayed over the three stones around her neck and hooked through the two empty settings. “It’s a work in progress, obviously.” She smiled again suddenly. “And look where I am, Meg.” She swept her arm around, taking in the whole of London and the Shard. “Look what I have. I’m not like you. I didn’t get given a solitary penny by my parents. I had nothing. Now I have everything, or I will do, very soon.”

  I stared at her, stunned, and for a moment I felt a deep well of sympathy for her. I wanted to root for her. I wanted her to have everything her heart desired.

  Except that the deep well of sympathy ran bone dry right around the point where she killed my parents and my best friend and kidnapped Addie and tortured Mo to get it.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “Really? You’re doing all this to get one up on Don?”

  “Oh, well, no. Now I have slightly bigger fish to fry than Donny. You know, when I offered to buy this stone from the Conspiracy, there was only one of them who even objected? Stupid, old, white men surrounded by history and arrogance – I don’t know why I’d expected them not to be corrupt as well. This whole world is so broken. There’s no justice, Meg, none at all. I know you know that. My mother died living like a serf in her own house because Don never worked out ther
e was any other way to treat her. Wouldn’t it be a better world if injustice was punished?”

  “Yes, it would, you total hypocrite,” I said.

  She shrugged. “We could stand here and debate ends and means all day. It doesn’t change the fact that when people have a choice, they choose to be terrible.” She looked up, and I followed her gaze. A flock of pigeons were settling on the girders. The one that had been my mum hopped closer and tilted her head to the side, one beady red eye glaring at me. I wondered again who all those other people used to be.

  “Do you want to know all the sordid little things I found out about your parents, over the last few years?” Victoria asked.

  “No,” I managed.

  “Not about your mother’s corruption? About the blackmail? The backhanders? The threats? What about your father? I liked him much more than your mother, but even I could see he was a liar, and a coward, up to his elbows in fraud and exploitation.”

  I gazed out over the misty sprawl of London, tears pricking my eyes.

  I wasn’t shocked. She was trying to shock me, but I knew my parents had it in them.

  What made me blink back tears was the fact that I would never know. I’d never be able to confront them myself. Because she had taken that away from me.

  “Parents are people, and people are bastards,” I said.

  “Well put,” Victoria smiled. “Still, your father did build me this wonderful place. You know, magic and towers are linked, right down in the deep bones of the world. The old wizards fought like animals over them.” She gestured to the spread of the city below us. “Don’t you just love it here? Far above the world. Above it all. No more family. No more stupid expectations.”

  No more family?

  How dare you. Seriously, how dare you?

  Victoria’s voice softened again and she gave my shoulders another squeeze. “Listen, I understand the bird is dead,” she murmured. “But don’t worry, you didn’t kill your father. He was already gone.”

  “I know,” I said, through gritted teeth.

  “It’s actually for the best. There will always be casualties, when power has to be taken from the establishment by force. Damage will be done. If you help me now, perhaps fewer people will die,” Victoria said, leaning in close. “I’ll happily spare the Rabble boy and the little Skulk girl, but you’ll have to help me do it.”

  “How can I?” I said, my breath coming in a hysterical half-laugh. “I don’t know who it is, Victoria. I really don’t.”

  “I don’t believe that.” She turned. “Fran,” she said.

  “No, don’t!” I tried to run over to Mo, to put myself between him and Fran, but Victoria grabbed my arms, and then Fran had raised the scissors to his ear and…

  I hated myself for it, but I looked away when he screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Blood poured down Mo’s neck in rivulets. It soaked his T-shirt and dripped down the twisted wooden support and onto the floor.

  Fran handed Victoria his earlobe, with the earring still in it. Victoria held it up in front of me and gripped my chin, forcing me to look. It was fleshy and red.

  “There are so many, many parts of the body that are nonessential,” she said. “We are really at the tip of the iceberg here.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I actually don’t know,” I whimpered.

  “I think you do. Let me jog your memory.”

  I flinched hard and bit my lip – but Fran hadn’t moved. Mo was breathing hard and there were tear tracks on his face.

  “I’ve done my research. The last metashifter pretended to be one of the Cluster for years. The two spiders I have downstairs knew him. He became friends with a boy named Angel Dalston.”

  I blinked. Angel knew him?

  “He vanished from the Cluster and took the stone with him,” said Victoria. “I looked high and low for that stone, but for a year, there was nothing. And then I heard from Ryan. He said that he’d fought a Skulk shifter who had the Cluster stone but lost them before he could finish the job. I had my fog have a look around, and what should I find, but a spider shifter who’s been searching for their stone and found it in a school in Kensington? Next thing I know, there you are. Not the fox who fought Ryan. A new one. Do you see, Meg, where I’m going with this?”

  I did see, and it was absurd. There was no way I was the metashifter. I’d know!

  Wouldn’t I?

  Angel had known the metashifter. What if he’d kept track of him, or tried to find him again?

  What if he’d succeeded, that night, but it was too late and Ryan had already mortally wounded him?

  Wait a minute…

  Chandran had said that the Skulk wouldn’t have been able to hide the Cluster stone. It doesn’t work like that.

  But it did work. I felt it. I didn’t make it up, I actually felt something when I touched the Cluster stone.

  What, exactly, did that make me?

  Holy shit…

  “I think it’s you, Meg,” she said softly, smiling at me.

  I think you’re right.

  And if I let you know that, you’ll kill me on the spot.

  And so right now, the best thing I can do for Mo and Addie and James is not die.

  I forced a smile to cross my face, then looked up, caught Victoria looking at me, and frowned. “I can’t do this anymore.” I looked down out of the window and then cringed away again. “You’ve got me. It’s me, I’m the metashifter. I’ve known for days. But I haven’t changed because… because I knew you were watching me and I didn’t want to give it away,” I said, the fact that I was actually improvising helping a lot with pretending to improvise.

  Victoria stared at me hard. “I’m sure it’s you,” she said.

  But she couldn’t be sure, or she would have done it already.

  I took a deep sniff and gave the window another apprehensive glance. “Please, I can’t bear it any more. Let him go. You can have the metashift.”

  “You’re lying to me,” Victoria snarled. “Why? Why would you tell me to take it?”

  “I… I…” I raised my hands to my face and rubbed the bridge of my nose, as if lost in a terrible, hard decision. Then I brought my hands down hard towards Victoria’s chest, caught my fingers in the chain of the necklace that held the stones, and tore it off her.

  Sadly, that was the full extent of my plan. Victoria lashed out, her hand smacking into my cheek, reopening the cut on my jaw and sending me spinning to the floor in a burst of pain and drops of blood. I kicked out, catching her on the shin and making her stumble. I still had the necklace and I twisted my fingers in the empty settings and curled up around it. I had the stones and she’d have to prise them from my cold dead fingers.

  Victoria kicked me in the stomach and I crumpled up, choking. She bent down and took hold of the necklace. No way. I locked my fingers and held on for dear, potentially very short life. She actually lifted me off the floor in her attempts to get it out of my fingers.

  “Let go,” Victoria snapped. She turned back to the table and picked up the silver hammer. It glistened as she turned it over and over in her hands.

  “No!” Mo screamed.

  Victoria raised the hammer.

  I’ve never been particularly athletic, and I was especially bad at gymnastics. But then, I’ve never been about to have my fingers broken by a sorceress wielding a silver hammer before.

  I waited for her to bring the hammer down and threw everything I had into rolling backwards and bringing my feet up to kick her in the stomach. She curled up, winded, and dropped the hammer.

  I had seconds. Victoria was still doubled up and gasping. I writhed up to a sitting position, dropped the necklace, snatched up the hammer in my bound hands and brought it down as hard as I could on the white stone. It ricocheted with such force I thought I might tip over. There wasn’t even a scratch on the smooth white surface. I growled with frustration.

  Who the hell makes a hammer out of silver, anyway? It’s hardly
the strongest metal in the world!

  But what’s softer than silver? What’s softer than just about anything?

  Gold.

  I brought the sharp end of the hammer down with all my might on the gold setting between the stones. It bent, and on the second blow, it snapped. There was a rush of air from nowhere, carrying a strange scent of salt and freshly cut grass. It blew Victoria onto her back. I tugged and bashed until the stones came apart in my hands.

  Mo crashed to the ground and I saw Roxie and James shake off their restraints on the other side of the room. There was a cry of triumph from somewhere below us – the barrier must have gone down. I saw Ryan try to grab Roxie, and then felt a bubbling rush of laughter in my throat when she ducked under his swipe and head-butted him. He dropped like a stone.

  Run, all of you, get out of here!

  Then something else happened. The pigeons changed. They slid from their perches on the girders, wings flailing as the feathers shrank back and wing-bones turned into fleshy fingers, beaks into soft mouths.

  I found her – Mum, flapping and shrieking, her long neck growing longer and her thin ribs widening. She clawed for a talonhold on the girder for longer than the rest, then her legs lengthened and became pink and skinny and she slid to the floor. One by one the pigeons transformed back into people. They flopped onto the ground and lay there. I stared at Mum. Her eyes were blank. She was breathing… but not there. Like someone in a coma.

  “You little bitch.” Victoria staggered over to me and kicked out. I flinched away and shielded my face with my hands and her shoe connected hard with my wrists. The pain made my head spin. She sank to her knees and made a grab for the stones. I elbowed them away, tried to get them underneath me, but her fingers closed on the white stone and she reared back with it clutched in a death grip, her knuckles standing out hard and bony.

  Her eyelids flickered. The pigeon-people stirred. They got to their feet, slowly, and looked around. I felt my jaw drop in horror as I saw one of them make a pecking motion with his head. Another one flapped one arm, experimentally. Mum’s eyes were full again – bright red, and full of birdlike rage.