‘Silence, please. I’m contemplating the first incision. And keep still, too. For your own sake it’s best if we make this as brief and painless as possible.’ His eyes were an insane match for his grin as he added, ‘But it won’t be painless, I promise you that.’
With the forked instrument he made a delicate movement in a straight line from the neck of my T-shirt to my solar plexus, slicing the material as if easing a knife through soft butter. The material separated with a faint ripping sound, but he hadn’t touched my flesh, not yet.
‘Well, it’s goodbye and hello,’ he said. ‘See you in our homeland when we’re done.’
He held both hungry twisting tools of torture aloft and ready.
Another growl of thunder resounded through the room. This time it was nearer and this time he heard it too. He froze, and the grin slipped a little. His gaze grew cautious and flashed from the door to me, then back to the door as it exploded inwards, bringing hinges and splintered chunks of door frame with it.
They were storming the surgery.
If the sight of the foursome at the doorway filled me with joy and wonder, it must have struck cold fear into Rictus’s heart. As his face fogged over, the deadly tools stopped moving, becoming worthless scrap metal objects in his hands.
‘Oh. . .’ he murmured. ‘Oh, rats.’
For a split second he looked torn two ways – stand his ground against what was coming or rip me to shreds anyway, just for the sake of it – but Lu was on him before he could blink. Tearing through the room like a lightning bolt, her face as seriously set as a mask, she delivered a forceful high kick that wiped the grin off Rictus’s face once and for all.
It did much more than that, too. The professor’s head spun a full ninety degrees on his shoulders until it faced backwards. His top hat went flying and he dropped the surgical tools. This happened so quickly I hadn’t even registered the others who’d come, but I saw the first of them now.
Tweaking his hat back on his head, Mr October flashed a silver tooth at me. Behind him were two indistinct figures standing in the shade in the hall. As Mr October started inside, Professor Rictus made his move, lurching at Lu with both arms outstretched while his turned-around face glowered back at me. Unable to see where he was going, he blundered past Lu, who stepped neatly aside, and thundered into a bookcase, bringing an avalanche of weighty reading matter down on himself.
The thickest and heaviest of the books, Discorporation: A Surgical Reference, landed squarely at Lu’s feet. She looked at it a moment before picking it up, straining under its great weight, and batted Professor Rictus around the head with all her might – and Lu had considerable might.
The massive blow swivelled his head back the right-way around, face forward. His eyes twirled in their sockets and he faced Lu with a sabre-toothed snarl.
‘Backwards . . . forwards . . . make your bloody mind up, will you?’
And he came at her again, catching her around the midriff with a tackle that brought the two of them careering over me and over the trolley bed to the floor with a crash that shook the room.
Mr October was meanwhile unfastening the straps, his fingers working speedily, his eyes searching my face with some concern.
‘The poison,’ I said.
‘We know. Don’t worry – our medical staff are ready and waiting.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘Bad enough, but we know what to do. We’ve seen this before.’
‘He said it was lethal.’
‘And why believe anything they tell you?’ Mr October said. ‘He’s nothing but a butcher with a liar’s tongue.’
The trolley rocked and skewed aside as Lu and the soul thief Professor Rictus slammed into it. Sitting upright, I leaned over to see Rictus holding Lu in a headlock, the strain of keeping her in place written across his vein-bulging temples. Lu was slippery, though, and in an instant she’d reversed the move, screaming from the effort as she locked her left hand to her right forearm and dug a knee into the small of his back.
‘Aren’t we going to help her?’ I said, eyeing Mr October’s companions as they came forward. ‘Aren’t they? And who are they, anyway?’
‘I’ll explain about them soon enough,’ Mr October said, ‘but honestly, does she look like she needs help? Let her have her moment. There’s a little family history here.’ He checked my eyes with a light as the professor had before him, then signalled me to open my mouth. ‘Wider. Say Ah.’
‘Ah.’
‘That’s good.’
‘What family history?’
The struggle continued. Seizing Professor Rictus by his straggling hair, Lu began smashing his face against the washbasin, time and again. There was a crunch of bone on porcelain, and one yellow tooth pinged off a water pipe.
‘Can you stay upright by yourself? Try swinging your legs round,’ Mr October said. ‘We’ve long suspected Rictus had some connection with the deaths of Lu’s family. To this day her parents and siblings remain off our radar and not on any record. We believe the mah-jong cheat who drove her father to such desperate ends – bankruptcy and suicide – was one of Rictus’s associates.’ As Lu hurled the battered surgeon across the room and another bookshelf exploded around him, Mr October added, ‘Lu believes this too, and has long sworn revenge, so it’s best to let her work it out of her system.’
Lu came around the trolley, snarling and trembling. I’d rarely seen her so focused or furious. Professor Rictus scrambled blindly about the floor as she advanced, her wrists making slight but rapid movements at her sides, movements I’d seen her make in combat before. Whatever the invisible weapons she was able to summon up were, I knew they were lethal.
‘Now I’ll destroy you,’ she told Rictus, but the bark of Mr October’s voice stopped her.
‘Lu! A reminder that destroying him isn’t possible, since strictly speaking he’s isn’t alive. All we can do is banish or bind his kind where they can do no more harm. Besides. . .’ He signalled the other two, who came forward to hoist Rictus to his feet. ‘We need to find out what he knows of the enemy’s plan. Take him to headquarters and punish . . . I mean interrogate him there.’ Then he said to me in an apologetic tone, ‘Not that I approve of Lu’s methods, young man. We should lead by example, although sometimes drastic times do call for drastic measures.’
Lu looked thwarted. She turned to Mr October with the pleading eyes of a little girl whose toys had been confiscated.
‘Just one more?’ she asked politely.
He waved her on. ‘Oh, go on, if you must. Just don’t give me that look.’
It was all the encouragement she needed. Without any physical warning, she lashed the heel of a hand into Rictus’s face, mashing his nose.
Professor Rictus sagged in the arms of the other two. He hissed and spat as they cuffed his hands, his features twisting and contorting to reshape themselves, but he hadn’t the strength to change.
I looked at the two stern shapes who held him. Apart from their smart dark overcoats and highly-polished shoes I could tell very little about them. Even at close range their faces were oddly blurred and unclear and when I squinted I hardly saw them at all.
‘Who are they?’ I asked Mr October. ‘I’ve been seeing these two everywhere, outside my home, on the high street just now. . .’
Mr October said, ‘They’re the Shuffleheads. No one knows their real names and no one knows what they look like. Their faces are ever changing to conceal their true identities – which makes them well suited to undercover work. It’s a hard skill to master, too. I tried it once and it made me queasy. Had to lie down for a while. They were assigned to watch you and your mother because we knew the enemy had singled you out. If not for these two we wouldn’t have found you tonight. It’s them you should thank, not us.’
The Shuffleheads nodded at me, courteous and efficient, their faces unreadable.
‘I’m Dan,’ said one.
‘I’m Don,’ said the other.
‘But not for long,’ t
hey both said together.
‘Take him away, fellas,’ Mr October said, and Lu had to restrain herself from delivering a further crushing blow to the professor before they dragged him out. She sighed and turned back, giving me a little bow.
‘Sorry, got a bit carried away there,’ she said. ‘Are you OK, Ben?’
‘I am now. I will be.’
‘He will be as soon as the toxins are out of his system,’ Mr October said. ‘Better call ahead, Lu. Tell the medics we’re on our way.’
20
CONVALESCENCE
he clinic was on an upper floor at Pandemonium House. While the staff settled me into a warm bed in a white-walled room, Lu joined the Shuffleheads and their prisoner below ground in a place Mr October called the truth cellar.
I’d heard of these other levels at headquarters but hadn’t been allowed on either before. Apparently the building, like its records room, had no limit. There was more to it than I could possibly imagine, and its mysteries deepened every day.
In the private room, Mr October sat a while at my bedside before his next shift. I’d arrived in the clinic shaky and dehydrated, and my reaction to the journey between the walls from Camden Passage, Mr October said, was a classic sign of my condition.
‘The mescahydrocarciomyathalate in all its forms does one thing and one thing only,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately for us it does it very well. You’ve inhaled it and been injected with it, and at the butcher’s surgery you drank it undiluted. Most mortals wouldn’t be affected – in fact they’d find the smell and taste quite pleasant. But to the gifted, that kind of dosage can be lethal. The toxi-poloxi cactus is cultivated by the Lords of Sundown for this very reason, to neutralise the weapons we use against them, which it does by attacking our higher senses – the skills that make us what we are.’
‘Not sure I understand,’ I said, watching a blue-uniformed nurse wheeling a drip stand inside the room. She was in her mid thirties, fair-haired, and wore glasses with loud red frames. ‘You mean it takes away our powers, like kryptonite does to Superman?’
‘Something like that,’ Mr October said. ‘Your gift isn’t destroyed but dormant. The sickness shows you’re missing it, the way you’d miss your own soul if it were taken.’
‘So that’s why it all went away, why I couldn’t see the messages on the wall or even draw a simple picture at school?’
‘Correct. It’s why you couldn’t find the entrance to headquarters today.’
‘But I’ll start to see again?’
‘Most definitely,’ the nurse said, setting up the apparatus by the bed. ‘We need to run some tests and drain those nasty toxins away, and we’ll give you something to help you sleep. Excuse me, Mr October.’
He stood back while she adjusted the drip bag on its stand and slipped an IV needle under the skin on the back of my hand, sealing it in place with tape and feeding the drip tube along the bed frame where it wouldn’t be tripped over or trodden on.
‘I’m scared of sleeping,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t sleep. I have to find Mum. . . I just have to.’
‘We’re on it,’ Mr October said, very briefly becoming the elderly and kind-eyed empathiser. ‘As we speak, there are very capable field operatives in all parts of the city working flat-out to bring her back.’
‘So it’s not too late? There’s still a chance?’
‘Of course, and there’s little you can do until the good people here have treated you. We want you back full and strong. Rest assured, as soon as we hear anything you’ll be the first to know.’
I wished I could feel more reassured. ‘Tell me she’s still alive,’ I said. ‘If I only knew that, it would give me something . . . some hope.’
‘Can’t tell you what I don’t know,’ Mr October said. ‘Did Vileheart give any indication of his plans when you spoke?’
‘Only to say they were leaving. And another thing that struck me as odd. He said they didn’t often get to take mere mortals whole.’
‘Hmm. I see.’ Mr October mulled this over. ‘Presumably he meant intact, body and soul, in other words very much alive.’
The relief I felt, hearing that, didn’t last long.
‘Which doesn’t mean she’s out of danger,’ he continued. ‘She isn’t the first they’ve stolen this way. There are scores of recorded cases, including friends and family of some of us here . . . many of them taken alive but never seen again.’ My distress must have been obvious because he hurried on. ‘However, some – a few – were rescued and eventually returned to normal lives, as normal as their lives could be after such a trauma. All you can do, young man, is prepare yourself for the worst while hoping for the best. That should be your outlook all the time.’
‘But where do they go?’ I said. ‘The ones who were saved, where were they found?’
‘In this very city, but hidden. In holding.’
‘Holding?’
‘Held captive as the fire children were. But in cases like these, the living are held for briefing and debriefing before the descent . . . the journey to the place where the less fortunate ones were taken, the ones who never came back.’
‘Abhorra,’ I murmured.
‘That’s one name for it.’
‘Like in the comic. The Lords of Sundown story.’
‘That old propaganda,’ Mr October said. ‘They really should check their facts before they rush to print, you know. But we’d better leave this here. Soon the medics will give you something to help you rest and in the morning you’ll see more clearly. We’ll speak again on my return.’
Soon after he left me the nurse came again. She hummed an ancientspeak song as she checked my vital signs and gave me a knock out shot.
‘Mr October says we’re to take extra special care of you,’ she said, scribbling on a chart which she hung on the foot of the bed. ‘Which is a bit of a cheek, if you ask me. We take extra special care of all our patients. The bathroom’s there, by the way, and the buzzer’s above your head if you need anything. Now you should rest.’
I woke only once in the night, half-remembering an urgent question I’d meant to ask Mr October. The clinic was quiet and my room had none of the suffocating air of most hospital wards. While I listened to the soft-shoed comings and goings of staff on the corridor the question slipped away, forgotten, and sleep carried me off again.
In the morning I woke to find Becky napping in the armchair by the bed, making soft whimpering sounds as though running from something in her dreams. Suddenly she woke with a start, blinked and rubbed sleep from her eyes, pulling me into focus.
‘Morning,’ I said.
‘Ben? I’ve been so worried,’ she said. ‘But it’s going to be fine, we’ll get her back, I swear. This is top priority. They’re suspending all leave and recalling some agents who took early retirements. Mr October’s had a long meeting with the Overseers, and he’s got them onside. There’s a rumour he threatened to resign if he didn’t get the manpower he wanted.’
Too much information too soon. I couldn’t take it all in. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Oh, a while. Probably hours. So anyway, everyone’s on call, something big is about to happen, I just know it. And Mr October needs your help. He said to give you these.’
She lifted a carrier bag from the floor and took out an A4 sketch pad and a pencil, placing them on the bed.
‘What are these for?’ I said.
‘He wants you to draw something. The face of Luther Vileheart, last time you saw him. They have shed-loads of pictures of him on file, but Mr October believes he’s using another face now, or was until yesterday. Anything you can remember will aid the search.’
‘Not sure I can,’ I said, thinking of last week’s still life lesson. ‘Suppose I can’t do it anymore?’
‘It’ll come to you. The least you can do is try.’
She settled down to watch. I opened the pad but hesitated, the pencil wavering over the page. At first I couldn’t see what I needed to. The picture of Mr Redfern’
s art class was much clearer, the basket of fruit and the invisible something gripping my hand. I nearly leapt out of my skin when Becky’s fingers brushed mine.
‘I know you can do it,’ she said, ‘and if you can – if you do this one small thing – you’ll know you can do everything else. Don’t give up.’
So I set to work, trying to summon up Vileheart’s human face as it appeared in the photo taken by the harbour. This face wouldn’t keep still for long, and the first marks I made on the page were messy and confused because all I could see in Vileheart’s eyes was the monster hiding behind them.
Becky coaxed me on. ‘Take your time. It’s OK. Clear your mind and see what you have to.’
Turning to a clean page, I tried to use my imagination instead, picturing Luther Vileheart as Mum might have seen him the first time he entered the café where she worked.
I saw him in his business suit, at odds with the usual clientele of hoodies and pensioners, taking his seat and studying the menu, deciding on the six quid roast dinner. I saw steam rising from the kitchen area behind the counter where an old cash register pinged like a typewriter when its drawer opened. I felt the smooth laminated menu in Vileheart’s hands as he smiled up at Mum, who smiled back and scribbled his order on her little pad.
She didn’t know it, but her life had just changed. He hadn’t come to dine but to plant a seed. She had no way of knowing that this charming man had her husband’s blood on his hands. She would remember his kindness, paying for the meal with a twenty-pound note and insisting she keep the change, a gesture that would give the rest of the staff something to gossip about for days.
The next time he came he would do the same again, and it sickened me to think that on those nights we’d eaten takeaways from Hai Ha’s paid for by Vileheart’s tips. Mum wouldn’t see him again for a while but she wouldn’t forget him, and when he came to her rescue in the HiperDino supermarket she almost felt she knew him.
‘There,’ I said, pushing the pad away and falling exhausted back on the pillows.
‘See?’ Becky said. ‘If you lost it, it came back to you just like magic. You can still do it.’
The Great and Dangerous Page 18