She locked gazes with her first victim, and again he backed down. ‘Right. Miss. Ma’am. We’ll show you the way and then you’ll be out of here, right?’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Irene said grimly.
Half an hour later, Irene was struggling not to think What if something’s happened to Kai or Vale? with every second step. She’d considered sending one of her little pseudo-pack to warn them to lock the doors and be careful, but she wasn’t sure that she trusted the werewolves out of her sight. They hadn’t tried to run away from her, though, which said something about how badly she’d frightened them.
She found it difficult to feel really terrified about her current situation. Possibly she was becoming jaded, after the last few months. In comparison with everything else, and especially in comparison with Alberich, a werewolf pack seemed like a pleasant walk in the park. Part of her knew this was not an intelligent attitude: just because a danger was less than world-threatening didn’t mean it couldn’t kill her. The other part of her was just plain irritated – with these idiot thugs; with whoever had hired them; with the heat and the darkness and the dryness and the dust; with this waste of time; with everything.
For a moment she thought she was imagining it and rubbed her eyes, but then she realized that it was actually getting lighter ahead of them. ‘Are we there yet?’ she asked the nearest werewolf.
In the growing light, she could see the uncertainty on his face. ‘I’m not sure about this . . .’ he mumbled. ‘Maybe you should let us go in and find that folder thing for you?’
‘No,’ Irene said firmly. ‘I don’t think so. Try again.’
‘Maybe I should go and tell them you’re coming – ask for an audience?’ he hazarded.
‘That’s more like it,’ Irene approved. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t take long.’
He swallowed and loped on ahead. His gait had been becoming visibly more animalistic over the last few minutes. Either the Language’s hold was wearing off, or it had worn off some time back and he’d only just realized it.
‘You could simply walk away, ma’am,’ one of the remaining werewolves said. He and his friend were still carrying their unconscious compatriot between them. ‘If you were to head straight out from here, there’s a ladder to the north—’
Irene adjusted her hat. It was battered, dust-smeared and probably ruined, much like her coat, and any professional cleaner would have them both burned on sight. ‘Gentlemen, you seem to think that I’m a lady of fashion,’ she said. ‘I’m not. I’m a professional, and I am the sort of professional who has just thrashed all four of you together. And then I let you live, because you’re not a threat to me and I don’t have any quarrel with you.’
She’d spent most of her life playing the invisible underling in the background, creeping around in the shadows to avoid attention. Over the last few months she’d come to realize that taking the initiative and acting like someone who deserved respect might also be a valid strategy. She was not someone who was going to walk in there and apologize for the intrusion. She was a professional, a Librarian, and thoroughly dangerous. She was going to demand an apology for kidnap and theft. And if that failed, she’d damn well drop the ceiling on them.
They would listen to her. Or else.
The light ahead of them grew. It was a dim shade of reddish-orange, but compared to the tunnels it was practically midday. Well, midday on an overcast October day with a fair amount of cloud, but still an improvement. It was accompanied by a growing animal wet-dog smell, which made Irene breathe carefully so as not to wrinkle up her nose.
The archway they came to was flanked by two piles of clothing, each with a large wolf nesting on top of it. They looked up and dropped their jaws in a growl, but didn’t try to stop Irene as she walked forward.
The room beyond was an amphitheatre of sorts: it was large and circular with a sloping base. The floor was covered with tangles of werewolves. Some of them were in human form, naked or clothed, while others were in animal or part-animal form. Huge wolves were draped over their pack members like puppies in a litter. The place resounded with their breathing and panting. It caught in Irene’s throat and made her pulse stutter. A battered chandelier hung from a hook that had been screwed into the ceiling, decorated with burning oil lanterns that flared red and orange. The place was full of an animal heat and danger, which even Irene – the most human person in the room – could feel.
At the centre of the room, in the middle of the amphitheatre, sprawled a well-dressed man in a city gentleman’s clothes, right down to the bowler hat and striped waistcoat. He reclined on a throne made from battered Tube signs, patched together with wire and scrap and draped with fragile-looking velvets and lawns. Several other werewolves clustered around his feet or lounged beside him. The ones nearest him were either in wolf form or in fully-clothed human form – a mixture of men and women in comparatively normal clothing.
One of them rose to his feet, a bruiser in half-animal form, with a human stance but a wolf’s muzzle and paws. His pale fur was a bloody orange in the lantern-light. He cleared his throat in a parody of a formal butler’s manners.
‘You may approach Mr Dawkins,’ he announced.
A growl rippled around the room like surf on the beach, and animal and human eyes caught the lantern-light as the inhabitants turned to look at Irene. These were not tame werewolves, or even romantic werewolves. Imminent violence hung in the air as thickly as the animal smell that filled the room.
Irene stamped down on the immediate urge to back out of the room and make a break for freedom. Running from a group of predators was the very thing guaranteed to get her killed. And I am not prey. I am a Librarian.
She stepped into the room.
CHAPTER TEN
Irene strolled forward, keeping her pace nonchalant and casual. She had to pick her way across the piles of sleeping or watching bodies to reach the centre, and her skirt trailed across werewolves who couldn’t be bothered to move. Her unwilling escorts hung back by the entrance, but didn’t try to run for it.
Mr Dawkins sprawled in his chair, watching as she approached. As she came closer, Irene could see that his face was scored with claw marks – he might be able to pass for a city gentleman, but it would have to be a very battered one, possibly with a prior career as a lion-tamer. Unlike most of the werewolves she’d met so far in this world, he wasn’t sprouting random tufts of hair.
Irene stopped about six feet from him: further away would have been rude, but closer would have put her at too convenient a distance for a casual attack. She wondered what the proper etiquette was for visiting werewolves. She’d done vampires, Fae, dragons and even university students, but never werewolves.
‘So.’ Dawkins’ voice was a deep rolling bass. Probably the hint of a growl behind it was only natural. ‘Is Mr Vale sending his spies into our tunnels now?’
‘No,’ Irene said. ‘I’m here to reclaim property that was stolen from me. One of your people said it could be found in the throne room.’ She jerked her head to indicate the battered quartet near the door. ‘I hope this isn’t an inconvenience.’
‘Remind me of her name again,’ Dawkins said to one of the women behind him.
The woman flicked a glance at Irene that was as sharp as cut glass. Her dark skin was ruddy in the lamplight, and her braided hair curved around her head like a nautilus shell. She was dressed in prim clothing that might have belonged to a shop assistant or a teacher. ‘She’s called Irene Winters, Mr Dawkins. Been here a few months now. Canadian.’
‘Now you see,’ Dawkins said, leaning forward, ‘this is where it gets interesting. I keep on hearing your name linked to Mr Vale, and connected to trouble with my people. Significant company, for a woman who’s only been here for a few months. That has me curious about you. Not necessarily opposed, you understand. That would be unreasonable.’ His voice, if possible, deepened. ‘But if you’re meaning to make me your enemy, then you’ve put yourself in harm’s way.’
&n
bsp; Irene shrugged. ‘Your people do seem to do a great deal of work for the Fae,’ she said. ‘Lord Silver. Lady Guantes. I regret it if your wolves have been caught in the middle.’
‘Mm.’ Dawkins considered that, his hands on the arms of his throne. ‘And Mr Vale?’
‘My friend,’ Irene said. Just this once, she didn’t care about the consequences of answering truthfully. ‘But that’s not why I’m here.’
There was a rising growl from the room around her. Messy images of the I-am-about-to-be-torn-to-pieces sort flickered through Irene’s mind, and it took all her self-control not to turn around.
Dawkins raised his right hand. The room fell silent. ‘It’s true that we can’t always pick our friends, any more than we can pick our family,’ he said. ‘Let’s not condemn her for that. But you’d better have a fucking good explanation for being down in our tunnels.’
His sudden vulgarity ripped through the hot air as his voice rose with it. The pack was growling again, all of them rising and snarling, like surf on the shore in a hurricane, or like rain slashing the leaves of a forest.
He’s reasonable, Irene thought. The surge of anger around her was reassuring, in its way: Dawkins had directed it, and Dawkins was in control. If she could deal with Dawkins, then the situation was manageable.
‘Blame your own people,’ she said. ‘I was coming out of the British Library when I was jumped, drugged, brought down here and had my property stolen.’ She pointed back in the direction of her victims, without breaking his gaze. ‘I’m not here to make myself your enemy, or to count their actions against you. But I want my property back.’
‘And someone here’s got it?’ Dawkins demanded.
‘Davey. Or so I’ve been told. I’d like the needle with the poison they used on me, too. If you don’t mind.’
Dawkins leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful. The scars on his face shifted into a new set of disfigurations. ‘And you aren’t calling any sort of debt on my boys, for snatching you?’
‘Why should I?’ Irene let herself smile. ‘They’ve already paid.’
The tension dropped a few notches. Dawkins nodded. ‘Right. Now I’ve a question I want answering. If you can do that, I may be able to help you. Celia!’ The woman with the braided hair tilted her head. ‘Go find me Davey.’
Celia nodded, stepping back and into the crowd.
‘So what’s the question?’ Irene asked.
‘A while back, some of my boys took a job for that Fae woman you mentioned. Lady Guantes, in from Liechtenstein. She was the one doing the hiring. They left on a train with her, and I haven’t seen them since.’ Dawkins’ voice was a low, throbbing growl, almost as deep as the rumble of the passing trains. ‘What I want to know is: what happened to them?’
Oh, this was going to be a difficult one to answer. ‘Why do you think I know?’ Irene parried.
‘She was working against you,’ Dawkins said. ‘I’m thinking that you or Lord Silver are the two people I’m most likely to get an answer out of, and I don’t want to pay Silver’s prices.’
Irene contemplated honesty. They were left behind in a dark, paranoid Venice in a high-chaos world, and you’ll probably never see them again. Perhaps tactful honesty would work better. ‘That train went to a Fae world,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but if Lord Silver or Lady Guantes didn’t bring them back, then I don’t think they’ll be coming back.’
‘You can’t fetch them, then?’
‘I wouldn’t go there if I could – but I can’t access that world,’ Irene admitted, ‘and I’d probably get killed if I tried. So no, I’m not going to be able to help you there.’ And she hoped that wasn’t a bad omen for the future. Saying she wasn’t going to do things under any circumstances was like using words such as unsinkable around big ships and icebergs. It was just asking for trouble.
There had been a stir of interest among the assembled werewolves at Dawkins’ question, which subsided again at Irene’s answer. It was interesting that Dawkins hadn’t seemed surprised at Irene’s suggestion of an alternate world. Perhaps working for the Fae left them more used to such concepts.
‘All right.’ Dawkins shifted position in his chair slightly. The movement was echoed by the group of werewolves around him, but on a larger scale, like an orchestra’s musicians following a conductor. ‘That’s a fair answer. I’ll not stand in the way of your talking to Davey.’
It wasn’t quite as helpful as I’ll make sure Davey turns over your stolen property, but it would do for a start. Irene nodded in thanks.
Then the wave of chaos-tinged power hit her again, slamming down on the room in a silent burst that made her shake. She locked her knees and bit her lip, conscious that she was swaying, but aware that if she showed weakness, her grip on the situation would be broken. It didn’t touch the werewolves, they couldn’t even feel it, but it ran across Irene’s nerves in a burst of foul scent and heat, then leapt for the nearest printed material like an arcing current.
‘What the hell is this?’ Dawkins rose from his throne, inspecting it in confusion. Irene went up on her toes to get a better look at it, over the heads of the werewolves that were crowding around, and her heart sank even lower. All the carefully attached Tube signs were covered in graffiti or had changed their wording entirely, and the new writing was all in the Language.
I know you’re there, it said.
Write something back on it, she’d been told. It was harder than she’d thought to pull herself together in the aftermath of that strike. It was probably also a bad idea to associate herself with the event in the eyes of the werewolves. But she needed answers. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, then raised her voice above the confused babble. ‘Excuse me! Does anyone have pen and ink?’
‘I do,’ said one of the werewolves who’d been near the throne. He was an elderly man, with grizzled hair that ran down his face in long sideburns, paired with a draggly beard, and he was fully dressed. He fished in his breast pocket. ‘That is, would a pencil do?’
‘Perfect,’ Irene said, plucking it from his hand before he could object. ‘Mr Dawkins, please give me a moment and I’ll try to find out who sent this.’
‘Do you know what’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘Possibly,’ Irene said. She squeezed between two werewolves to get at the throne, stepping on a set of bare toes to make some space for herself, and hastily scrawled in the Language on the nearest sign: Alberich?
This time she was more prepared for the shock of the response. It didn’t make it any easier, but it did mean that she could brace herself against it. The writing on the throne changed, like sand being dragged into new patterns by an invisible tide. My little ray of sunshine. Have you changed your mind about your future?
Irene gritted her teeth. At least that proved it was Alberich. Only a very few people knew that her original name had been Ray, and he, unfortunately, was one of them. From what, to what? she wrote.
Dawkins leaned over her shoulder, with enough rolling power to his movement that it nearly burst the seams of his city gentleman’s suit. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain,’ he said. There was a non-optional tone to the suggestion.
‘It’s on my newspaper!’ one of the nearby werewolves complained, holding up a sheaf of newsprint, which Irene recognized, from her acquaintance with Vale, as the agony page from The Times. ‘All the same stuff that’s on there!’
Irene spared a moment to hope that Davey – and her folder – were well out of the effect’s range. ‘It’s from a man named Alberich,’ she said. ‘He’s tried to kill me in the past.’
‘Why?’ The tone of Dawkins’ question acknowledged that people no doubt had perfectly good reasons to kill each other. It seemed he was asking merely to satisfy his own curiosity about their motivations, rather than from any moral imperative to prevent a killing.
Irene shrugged. ‘I stole a book, he stole it back, he betrayed us, these things happen—’ She broke off at a new surge of power, and the writing on the throne changed again
. Join me, tell me what the book said, and be safe. Or perish with the Library.
‘Oh, you don’t need to make excuses to us,’ Dawkins said. There was a thin round of applause and snarling from the mob. ‘So, you going to tell him what he wants to know?’
‘No,’ Irene said. A sudden headache was rising to a blinding intensity. I’m interested, she scribbled. I want to live. Tell me more. All of which were true in themselves. One couldn’t lie in the Language. She just hoped that together they’d give a totally false impression of surrender.
There was a pause, and then the words re-formed. You’re probably lying. But we’ll talk later. If you live.
The humming weight of power grew, swelling around Irene. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being in the cross-hairs of some impossibly large gun. The metal Tube signs were beginning to shudder on the throne’s framework, rattling against their fastenings in a rising screech of metal.
Her next conclusion wasn’t born from logic. It was a leap of imagination, combined with a very vivid mental image of what would happen when the energy levels down there rose too high. ‘Everyone get back and get down!’ Irene shouted, following her own advice.
The throne exploded. Shattered Tube signs scythed in every direction, humming through the air and slicing into everything in their way. Irene hugged the ground, her arms over her head, hearing screams and crashes, but not daring to raise her head till the noise had stopped.
At least the bursts of power had ended too. Her headache was draining away, and she could think clearly. And her first thought was, Dawkins is not going to like this.
She looked up. Dawkins was standing above her. His coat was split down the sleeves, and his arms rippled with muscle. A healing gash dribbled blood from his forehead to his jaw, and while his face was still human, there were too many teeth in his mouth, and his eyes were pure red.
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