Still nothing happened. Damn. I’d really needed Cosette to be wrong on this one. Maybe if I concentrated, tried to think like Rosa, I could spark her into life. I closed my eyes and imagined Joseph tied up in chains. It was a great image; it fed my anger and frustration, but nothing else. Joseph was pleasant-looking - even if his intentions were anything but - but he wasn’t exactly eye-candy. Maybe what Rosa needed was for me to think of someone more—
‘Psst, I tole you, that don’t work, sidhe.’ The sharp whisper made me flinch. ‘All you gonna do is give ’er nightmares.’
My heart thudding with disbelief, and the tiniest touch of hope, I looked towards the voice.
Moth-girl’s white face grinned at me. ‘We’ve come t‘rescue you,’ she whispered happily. ‘Great, innit?’
I rolled out of Rosa’s body and off the slab and crouched down next to Moth-girl, hoping that Joseph couldn’t see ghosts through stone. ‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Me, Daryl, an’ that ovver vamp I stuck wiv the knife, oh, an’ yer doctor pal.’
Anxiety spiked through me. Crap, what the hell was Grace doing here?
‘I couldn’t find that ovver vamp you wanted me to tell, y’know, the Asian-lookin’ one,’ she went on.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘He turned up anyway. What about the police? Did you tell them?’
‘Oh yeah, them’s coming too,’ she sniffed, adding, ‘well, maybe.’ The grey patchwork of her clothes fluttered with disdain. ‘That bitch-witch in charge weren’t too impressed wiv my story; ’er and yer doctor pal had a right set-to ’bout it all. So the coppers ain’t ’ere yet.’
Damn - did that mean the police would get here before the demon or not? Detective Inspector Helen Crane had to know that midnight was demon dinner time, didn’t she? Of course she did, the cynic in me agreed, but wouldn’t a delay suit her if it meant I wasn’t around to cause her any more problems?
‘Hey, don’t look like tha’,’ Moth-girl’s eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘We don’t need no bleedin’ coppers, not when we got ghosts and shades. ‘Ere, ’ave a butcher’s.’ She peeked over the top of the slab, then rose up and rested her chin on her hands, grinning.
I joined her. Scarface shuffled silently in through the doorway. A woman carrying a bunch of withered flowers ambled behind him, then another man limped in; his head wrapped in a dirty bandage. The reek of putrefying flesh filled the air, but this time it was almost welcome. Then there were more ghosts, men and women, all moving silently: a boy with a flat cap leading a small tan and white dog on a string; two dark-haired little girls, about six years old, clutching each others’ hands and skipping in their charred frilly dresses; a soldier, his khaki-coloured uniform ripped and bloodstained, using his rifle as a crutch ... they kept coming.
I watched, bemused. ‘Where did they all come from?’
‘’Mazin’, innit?’ she whispered gleefully. ‘Yer doctor pal just picked up th’Easter egg fing an’ opened it, an’ whoosh, out they all come. I told ’em to come in ’ere an’ disrup’ fings.’
I spotted the ghost knife lying at the side of Rosa’s stone altar; if I could reach Cosette before Joseph noticed—
‘C’mon, then.’ I snatched up the knife and rushed round the altar. ‘Let’s see how much disruption we—’
‘Stop.’ Joseph’s voice reverberated through me, pinning me in place. ‘Turn around and go back to the other tunnel.’ I watched hopelessly as the ghosts turned as one and started shambling away.
Joseph’s brown eyes were blinking fast above his face-mask. He held up the hypodermic in one hand and pushed back his glasses with the back of his wrist as he watched them leave. I stared at Moth-girl’s retreating back. I wanted to tell her it was a good try, that no way could she have known Joseph was a necro, or how powerful he was, but I couldn’t move. Joseph’s command to go back to the other tunnel evidently hadn’t applied to me.
He looked over at me, frowning. ‘I don’t know how you did that, Genny, but—’ He stopped and looked around. ‘Someone else is here, aren’t they?’
I stared up at him from my frozen, half-bent stance, fingers inches away from the knife. He’d asked me a question. I discovered I didn’t have to answer.
‘Tell me,’ he commanded.
‘Friends,’ my mouth blurted.
‘The police? Tell me.’
‘No.’
‘Who then—?’
A dark blur dropped from the roof as if gliding on black-leather wings and landed on the sacrificial altar, crouching in front of him. Joseph jumped, a startled, high-pitched cry issuing from his mouth. He stabbed at the black blur with his needle, embedding it in the blur’s chest. The blur shook itself, snarled and leapt at Joseph, ploughing them both into the machines - which crashed in a crescendo of noise, sparks showering upwards in bright tracer-like arcs. Amidst the chaos, the blur hunched over Joseph and buried its head in his throat and a short, pain-filled scream resounded through the tunnel. Then the scream cut off as a fountain of blood cascaded over the hunched figure, leaving only an echo in its wake.
Had the demon come early?
I launched myself towards the blur, knife still in my hand then stopped to stare down at a blood-drenched but vaguely familiar tawny head of hair. The owner was now gnawing its way through Joseph’s throat. The sounds of tearing flesh and muscle and the quick snap of bone and the metallic scent of blood made my stomach roil, and brought the snakes hissing and slithering in agitation over my skin.
‘My Daryl got ’im!’ Moth-girl fluttered to my side, punched her arm in the air and whooped, ‘My Daryl got that fucker ghost-grabber!’
Darius the lap-dancing vampire lifted his head and gave her a gore-covered grin. ‘Your plan worked great, didn’t it, Shaz?’ he said, pushing himself up on all fours and rising to his feet in an oddly inhuman move.
He unzipped his black leather coat and slipped out of it; underneath he wore just his sequinned Calvin Kleins - not even any boots. Didn’t he have any other clothes? He shook the coat, and blood and other heavier bits splattered to the concrete floor, then he shrugged it back on, zipped it back up and licked his lips. ‘Real great,’ he grinned again.
I looked down.
Joseph was lying there, his glasses askew on his mangled head, the white of his spine glistening in the bright red abstract of his neck, his legs at an odd angle. I was still puzzled by Joseph. He’d seemed ... well, nice, and strangely naïve when I’d first met him. But evil doesn’t always show its face as ugliness, or fangs, or strangeness. That would be much too easy.
And yeah, Moth-girl’s plan had worked real great! It might not have been pretty, but Joseph was gone, and I couldn’t feel anything other than satisfaction.
But now there was the rest of it to finish.
I looked over at my body, still lying on the sacrificial altar, wondering why Cosette hadn’t put in an appearance. Then I saw the reason for her absence: sticking out of my body’s chest was the handle of the soul-bonder knife, the oval amber of the dragon’s tear winking in the candlelight. Darius must’ve have attacked Joseph mid-ritual, so Cosette was trapped—
‘Genny,’ an anxious voice called from behind me, ‘is that you?’
I clutched anxiously at the ghost knife as I turned. Grace peered at me as she hurried through the archway, her pink-check jacket flapping over her blue doctor’s scrubs, her frizz of black curls flattened and tangled with cobwebs on one side, dust streaking the dark skin of her left cheek like a half-finished war stripe. She carried the open Fabergé egg in one hand and led the tearful florist’s lad with her other, her backpack slung over her shoulder. Heartfelt relief flooded into me. They were both still alive.
Bobby stalked behind Grace like some sort of übergoth warrior in his all-black Mr October outfit, his hair neatly pulled back in his trademark French plait. He carried Moth-girl’s body in his arms. ‘Hey, Sharon,’ he called, ‘are you getting back in here, or do you want me to keep carrying you around?’
&nb
sp; Grace dropped the lad’s hand and rushed up to me - the ghost me - and flung her arm round me in a tight hug. ‘Thank the Goddess you’re okay, Genny. I’ve been so worried about you.’ The snakes flared, then settled, but she didn’t appear to notice them. She also appeared to find me very solid, and that meant it was close to midnight, when the dead could converse - and more, if they wanted - with the living.
I hugged her back just as hard, keeping the ghost knife safely pressed to my thigh, breathing in her comforting floral perfume with its faint underlay of antiseptic. ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue, Grace,’ I murmured, totally inadequately, ‘and I’m fine now - but what on earth happened to you?’
She trembled slightly, then sniffed and gave a nervous laugh. ‘That Souler chap, Neil, jumped out at me when I went to help the lad here. Stupid really, I should’ve checked for someone guarding him first.’ She gave another hiccoughing laugh and hitched up her backpack. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this action-rescue business. Although I did bring spells.’ She pulled away and looked back at Bobby, a slightly scared expression on her face. ‘But Bobby took care of him.’
Bobby had laid Moth-girl’s body down on a clear patch of floor and was now staring at Rosa where she lay on her stone slab.
‘Took care of him, how?’ I asked, frowning.
‘Oh, he didn’t bite him.’ Grace blinked, her pupils nearly eclipsing the dark brown of her irises. ‘He just threw him against the wall.’ She did that hiccoughing laugh-thing again and I realised she was suffering from mild shock ... but then, treating victims in a nice bright clinic like HOPE, even the violent ones, took a different type of courage to venturing underground with a couple of vamps and a sometimes ghost girl. ‘He’s dead - broken neck. I checked,’ Grace added with another blink.
Good riddance, he’d certainly got what was coming to him. But Grace didn’t need to hear that right now. I hugged her again and murmured, ‘Hey, it’s okay, you’re doing brilliantly, and the lad’s safe now, thanks to you.’ I looked at the boy in question, who was standing there shivering, hunched over—
Then a thought hit me like a sucker-punch to my stomach.
Grace had broken the circle to get the florist’s boy and the Fabergé egg out.
And that meant there would be no magic to contain the demon when it turned up. And without even the tenuous boundaries of a graveyard to hold it, it would be free to roam anywhere! And it would be free to take anyone - not just the dead!
I had to get everyone out.
And I had to get the circle closed again.
‘You need to get out of here, Grace,’ I cried, letting her go, ‘and take the lad with you. MOVE! Now!’
A rumble shivered the ground.
Grace froze, her eyes wide with shock and fright.
I pushed urgently at her, yelling, ‘You need to get out, all of you, get out now—!’
The rumble came again; this time dust and bits of brick fell from the ceiling and muted explosions like a hundred-gun salute reverberated through the tunnel.
‘What the bleedin’ ’ell is that?’ Moth-girl squealed.
‘Fireworks,’ Bobby shouted, looking warily up at the arched roof. ‘The trolls are having one of their Hallowe’en parties up on London Bridge.’
‘Run,’ I shouted again. ‘It’s midnight.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Midnight.
All Hallow’s Eve.
It’s the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead dissipates ...
... and demons come trick-or-treating.
This particular demon had dressed up for the occasion in a navy lounge suit, his pale blue shirt open at the throat and fastened at the cuffs with links of heart-shaped sapphires the size of thumbnails. His top pocket sported a silk handkerchief the same colour as his shirt. He exuded ‘relaxed man-about-town’ charisma, but as he surveyed the room, the azure of his eyes shone colder and sharper than the sapphires at his wrists. The demon had dressed up as the Earl, London’s ex-head big-cheese vamp, the vamp I’d killed, and the star of my nightmare after the bakery explosion.
I tried to see the irony in that, except my mind was still short-circuiting with fear.
‘Genevieve, my dear, how nice to see you again.’ The demon gave me the Earl’s charming smile. Centuries of practice meant he showed no hint of his fangs. ‘Well now, this is all terribly interesting.’
Interesting wasn’t quite the word I’d have chosen. Everyone apart from Moth-girl and me was frozen in place; she hovered next to Darius, scared, but with a defiant expression on her white-painted face. I frowned as my mind finally came up with a question. Demons aren’t usually the chatty sort, more the fast-food type. He was loose, there was no circle to contain him, and we were in an unconsecrated graveyard. Why hadn’t the demon just gobbled us all up?
Or maybe he really was the Earl, and all this demon stuff was new to him.
‘So did you turn into a demon when you died, or what?’ I asked, surprised my voice came out steady.
‘Oh no, my dear, this is just a guise - I found his soul wondering unclaimed in the pit and decided I liked the look of it.’ He adjusted his handkerchief. ‘I thought you might appreciate its appearance, as you are somewhat acquainted with each other.’ He grimaced slightly. ‘Although I have found his personality is a bit ingrained after all his time in the mortal world - I do keep getting this urge to talk at length about certain things, like the ongoing rights of vampires. It is mildly irritating.’
‘Feel free to go back to hell and change,’ I said offhandedly, keeping the ghost knife close to my thigh. A vague plan started to form in my mind; the tunnels were on the south side of the Thames, so the river had to be to the north. ‘Don’t let us keep you,’ I added.
‘Ah, but our time is so short, a mere hour, so it appears I will need to continue with him for now. So, onto our evening’s purpose.’ He rubbed his hands briskly. ‘I see there is a good collection of souls, spirits and shades on offer next door. Some are a little the worse for wear, but nonetheless acceptable.’ He walked over to study the florist’s lad. ‘And I do approve of the virgin.’ He sniffed at the boy’s neck. ‘It’s been a few years since I’ve been presented with one. They appear to be rather hard to find nowadays.’
‘To be honest, virgin sacrifices rather went out with the Dark Ages,’ I said flatly, cautiously unhooking Grace’s backpack from her unresisting arm. The painting of the barren landscape at the end of the tunnel room showed the sun setting. Whatever the painting’s use was, no sorcerer would have anything that depicted the world incorrectly; it would screw with their magic. I looked along past the painting, so north had to be ... there.
‘Actually it was after the Dark Ages,’ the Earl said pedantically. ‘But that is a discussion for another time. What are you doing, my dear?’
I carefully tucked the ghost knife under my arm, then unzipped the bag and stuck my hand in. ‘Seeing if my friend bought any Holy or Blessed Water with her.’
‘She didn’t,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘Most remiss of her.’
I rummaged around. He was right, she hadn’t; but I was looking for other things too. My fingers closed round a paper bag of small lumps of a putty-like substance and what felt like a large squishy pack of cotton-wool balls - the spells Grace had brought with her. Other than a bottle of water and some medical stuff, there was nothing else, so they would have to do.
The Earl prodded Malik’s tranqed body with his navy loafer and nodded to himself, then strolled up to Darius. He looked him up and down as if contemplating buying, then reached a hand out to the zipper on his black leather coat.
‘Oy, leave ’im alone,’ Moth-girl snarled at him.
The Earl snarled back, his mouth yawning wide, plunging us into a deep, dark abyss, so deep you knew there was no end, that you’d be forever falling, forever screaming, forever terrified, forever burning, with the darkness and the flames eating you up, over and over again—
Then we w
ere back in the tunnel room, the candles flickering over the roof, sweat beading my forehead and the hot trickle of piss wetting my jeans, and Grace’s floral perfume chasing away the reek of brimstone and sulphur.
Moth-girl had collapsed to her hands and knees and was retching violently.
For a moment I thought I would join her as my fingers convulsed around the squishy cotton-wool spells and I swallowed painfully, my throat as raw as if I really had been screaming for aeons ...
The Earl went back to unzipping Darius’ coat. He took a long look, then walked towards Bobby, who was still standing next to Rosa’s body. He ran his hand over Bobby’s head, taking the French braid and weighing it in one hand. He leaned down to place a kiss on Rosa’s slightly parted lips and as he straightened, he reached out and tapped a fingernail almost thoughtfully against the gold locket that lay between her breasts.
The Cold Kiss of Death Page 36